The Invitation Barrier
by respectablealcoholic
Summary: PART ONE of the Heresy series. Alternate ending to 6x22. Kai and Bonnie end up back in a prison world, alone. He needs her for blood. She needs him for company. Can they share their own private world without killing each other?
1. Chapter 1

She felt him before she saw him.

It had been months. She wasn't sure how many. Except for photographs, magazines and movies, she had not seen a human face in all that time. The last person she had seen was him, before he left. And at the time, she was glad he went. She didn't even have to scream at him to leave her alone. It was in the same moment he realized he was back in hell that, even though he'd dragged her into it along with him, he took off. How was that supposed to make her feel? She was his only cellmate and the sociopath wouldn't stick with her.

He was angry. He had dropped to his knees, knotted his fists in his hair and screamed as if someone who cared could hear his despair through a hole in his world.

 _His world_ , she called it in her head. She was stuck in his world; although she tried hard to make it her own. She made home where she always had: in her Grams' house. She made do as she always had: alone. She went to the same grocery store, ate the food she liked for free, shopped for clothes somewhere new each time and took them home for free, she was _free_. She could do whatever she wanted; run through town like a hellion, swim in fountains, defile public art and play her favorite music at top volume wherever and whenever. His world was her playground. But fun and freedom only take you so far when you're alone.

She lost track of how many months she stayed glad he was gone. She knew the amount of time it took before she wished he'd come back was the exact amount of time it took to break Bonnie Bennett; it was the exact amount of time that existed on her moral clock, and however long ago it chimed, it chimed so loud it shook her into what she could only assume was the basest insanity she would ever reach. Bonnie Bennett missed Kai Parker.

Knowing this, and hating it, she lost sleep revisiting her last moments with him and dissecting them, analyzing, scouring the details for possible redemption, first on his part so that she may find hers second.

She was still blurry, but from what she understood it went something like this:

She was dying. The pain was great. Damon's face loomed hazy above hers saying, "I'm so sorry, Bonnie." He kissed her forehead. Then he disappeared. Kai, apparently incensed, started rambling. Her heart felt heavy with betrayal and her breath brought her less oxygen with each second that passed. She listened to Kai monologue away hating that his voice was going to be the last one she heard. "Did that just happen? I don't care what you think, none of you are any better than me. Your _friend_ just left you. Like, to die. And you're bleeding _a lot_. Like, _a lot_ a lot. God it smells delicious. I wanna eat you right now more than I've ever wanted to eat anything in my entire life," he mused. "Yeah. You should probably hightail it." Then he laughed, "Oh that's right, you can't. Because I broke you. …Wow, he really just left you." For a minute, he actually stopped talking. She hoped he would stay quiet long enough for her to take her last breath in what little peace the moment afforded her, pretending he didn't exist.

She gasped for what felt like both terrifyingly and hopefully the last time, her peripheral vision grew darker and darker until it closed in on the rest of her sight and she let her eyelids fall. Then, oddly, she felt her body turning. It struck her as death first and she felt a breath on her face, but something about the angle to which her spine curved gave her just a slight surge of energy and she lazily opened her eyes. Kai was holding her up, his cruel eyes beseeching her, his mouth forming the words she heard in a second's baritone delay, "That's too easy." And the next perceptible thing that happened was her lips on his wrist and a hot mouthful of viscous, copper tasting liquid. His blood pulsed into her mouth and her throat urged it down. She knew she only needed a sip but the drink seemed to last forever. He made damn sure she got a thorough helping; it was so thorough that his relieved face became clearer just as quickly as Damon's had blurred when he left her to die. She thought she might have a shot at getting herself the hell away from her fucked up killer-turned-savior, her fucked up friends and maybe her fucked up identity in the end.

Her motor skills hadn't quite caught up, however, and Kai picked her up. It was as he carried her bride-like over the debris and the bodies of wedding guests that the eerie chanting began. She felt Kai tense his grip on her as he looked around. "No," he said. In an instant they were consumed by blinding light and gravity abandoned them only to return with a vengeance seconds later when they collapsed on a new ground.

Bonnie didn't need to look around to know where they were. She knew by Kai's frustrated screaming. They were back. Or, he was back. She just happened to get caught on the same line, an unlucky bonus fish.

"I don't understand," she croaked. "How?"

Kai looked down at her with an expression of such rage she worried that he would undo the revival he'd just put her through. In a flash, he was gone. And then she was alone.

Weeks passed before she let her guard down, stopped looking over her shoulder all the time or waking to a light wind at night. Though she knew Kai Parker was somewhere in the world, she finally let herself believe he was gone for good. She found enough temporary peace to feel like she had indeed died. It wasn't so bad, especially after she realized that it wasn't 1994 they had been sent to. It was instead a new prison for a new crime. It was wedding day. It was the day Kai killed his entire coven, and the bride among them, who was his pregnant twin sister. This particular action was the one that left Bonnie with the most heartache, even above the sleeping beauty spell cast upon her best friend. She didn't know anyone capable of more evil in one day than Kai. However many horrors he'd committed, he somehow managed to reveal one of Bonnie's best friends for who he truly was. This repeating day, originally a shaming reminder to Kai of what he'd done, was the same day Damon essentially killed Bonnie. So Kai's world was hell for both of them in that way. But at least she had access to modern music.

To keep her mind off of betrayal, she buried herself in an investigation. Bonnie was plagued with the question of how they did it. How did a dead coven of witches spell their killer into a new prison world? She had exhausted her collection of grimoires looking for an answer and still to no avail. 1994 had presumably collapsed when Kai killed himself, but when he rose as a vampire she supposed that reopened the potential of binding new prison worlds to him, as he was still the coven leader. The mystery that remained was what kind of power could do such a thing. Everyone was dead.

It was possible that Kai knew what had happened. Having been raised in a family of witches with magic out in the open, he knew more about it than she did. He certainly knew how to get himself out of prison worlds by now and the fact that Bonnie hadn't heard from him meant 1.) He already escaped without her or 2.) This prison was designed more cruelly and escape was not possible.

At her darker, desperate moments, she screamed his name into the sky hoping that wherever he was he would hear her call, or feel her need. She wanted answers, and more than that, company. Even if it was bitter. Even if they killed each other. Even if she loathed him with more passion than she'd ever used for love. But when she finally howled herself hoarse with his name in her dry throat and a slew of tears embarrassed her and still he made no appearance, she gave up on him. She accepted hollowly that she would die alone after a lifetime of wondering where he went, how they got there and why he never came back for her.

Until she felt him.

Though he was now somehow both vampire and witch, she noticed when he force-fed her blood that she could still _feel_ him. She could still feel the magic in him, contrarily even stronger than she'd felt it when he was human and the magic was like a dead jolt. The time he picked her up, it was nauseating but impossible to refute the zing that travelled through her, witch to witch and back again, a bonding current between two naturally kindred beings. She wasn't versed in vamp-witch technicalities as the condition was unheard of before Kai's transformation, but she believed he was still _more_ witch than vampire. His mere presence was vibrational.

She didn't know _how_ near he was; only that he was. As the feeling went on for days without a more tangible clue, she understood she wasn't meant to know of his return yet. She would have to wait for him to reveal himself. And so, impatiently, she played dumb and continued her sentence in solitude with a quicker beating heart.


	2. Chapter 2

It worked.

Bonnie stood in the middle of the street outside, her daring eyes illuminated in the moonlight. Why night? It was poor decision making, she knew it was. But the vulnerability of it made it all the more promising, to taunt the danger of the dark and the deceitful forest surrounding her Grams' house, both factors concealing Death knows what. She was holding her sliced palm out into a fist, squeezing her blood onto the asphalt like wringing water from a rag. As sure as the moon above her would rise each night, the scent of blood on the wind was irresistible to a predator.

She had waited for so long. The hum of his nearness dragged on for weeks without a glimpse of him. Patience, formerly a virtue, bored her. She sought him out with occasional, possibly imagined spikes in her sense of him like coming across footprints, remnants of magic. Little ghosts of elations that took her breath away, only to withdraw their gleeful claws and leave her laboring for unshared air once more. She searched his most likely dwelling place, the Salvatore mansion, (it was, after all, a boarding house), only to find it empty with no sign of anyone on her plane of existence living there. The only evidence that anyone used the space at all were the dirty yet dry, bourbon smelling glasses left around the house by whatever Salvatore had been drinking that long gone day in the real world. So she left there. She walked through the neighborhoods, watching the windows, sure to keep discreet her fingertips feeling out for telling tingling that wouldn't come. The irked urge to leave a path of destruction, a trail of bread crumbs in the form of smashed lawn toys, butchered mail boxes and bashed in windshields, a little something to let him know that she was upset, consumed her. But the urge was quelled. Her self-control was one thing she prided herself on. There was of course the option of drawing him out more gently, but she didn't dare call his name now; somehow the reality of him responding and knowing that she wanted him to respond scared her.

As time passed and pining pressed, she worried that the hum she felt was a hallucination, a kickstand invented by her brain to keep her from falling into despair while she idled. Chemically forged hope. This thought made her listless. It made attractive the prospect of finally just huddling in to the welcoming arms of a mental breakdown. By the time Kai returned, if he ever did, he would find her appearance disheveled, her magic in dangerously impulsive condition and her social skills limited to conversation with herself and any tree that would listen.

Luckily her calm descent into true insanity was interrupted by an out of the ordinary event. As this world was just a repeat copy of one day in which she lived alone, Bonnie had grown unaccustomed to the universe prodding at her as opposed to her prodding at it. One night, a stack of grimoires toppled with several impassioned thuds to the hardwood in her bedroom, startling her awake. It was unexpected. Things didn't fall here unless she carelessly ordered them, and she rarely was careless. She snapped on the light with a wave of her hand and spent a few minutes harnessing her heart beat, assessing the room wide eyed from her bed; had he finally come? She muttered a spell that might reveal him if he were standing there cloaked by magic. Only quiet and stillness followed.

Bonnie dropped her frustrated head back onto her pillow and waved the light back out with an indignant flick of wrist.

A whisper of an idea of him standing at the foot of her bed while she slept—and then of what she might do if she woke to that, both terrified and happy to see another person and that person being the first man she's seen in months— made her teeth grit. She felt enough shame in admitting to herself that she missed him.

While she pushed, or rather shoved with the disgust the thought of him out of her mind, she couldn't suppress the sudden burning in her lower body. She missed men. She missed their scent, their broad shoulders, husky voices and particularly the way she felt around them. She missed feeling attracted to someone, the deeper way her heart used to dip into its thudding.

Falling asleep was hopeless after the scare of the toppling grimoires. Bonnie couldn't lie still. She knew by heart each rush the wind would make against the house and every creak it would cause, yet this night felt different. It was probably lingering adrenaline, but she couldn't ignore any one sound for fear, (or hope, she wasn't sure) that she was not alone in the house. She turned from side to stomach to side to back, twisting her quilt into irritating lumps. Any attempt at calm led to an unnecessary amplification of each sound that hit her ears and she found her thoughts being dragged kicking and screaming back toward that image. Kai standing at the foot of her bed.

That would be awful, she knew it, it would be the worst. Just downright horrifying.

 _But intriguing_.

 _No. Not intriguing. Not even remotely stimulating._

 _But what would he be doing there? Why at night? Why at the foot of bed, scowling down at her hungrily? Why had this been the first image to well up from the depths of her mind?_

 _Get it together._

For shear mental safety, Bonnie held onto memories of Jeremy, someone to whom she'd given permission and felt safe with. She knew how to do away with her specific unease, but she refused to fantasize. Using her imagination scared her sometimes. And besides, her devices were simply not the same as that which they mimicked. They lacked, above all, the emotion that only a second person could both offer of himself and evoke from her. No, tonight she would not fool her mind or her body. Tonight she would only remember, and these fond memories would keep her wild thoughts from whirling around the only real accessible man, let alone person, in the world.

The next day was spent moping in the bathtub, sitting even after the shower ran cold. It was hard for Bonnie to feel anything but lonely, and extreme discomfort helped to ease her backed up emotions. Sometimes indulging in reminiscence led her to a painfully balancing depression. What goes up…

She considered, not for the first time in this new hell, killing herself. As she was already in the tub, a few little slices over the wrists would be convenient. The trouble with that was anything sharp enough was all the way down the hall, in the kitchen. If she went to get something, she would change her mind by the time she found it. She kept picturing the blood, almost romantically. She saw it dripping from her skin, clouding in the inch deep water and swirling down the drain. Maybe she would stopper the drain and just soak in it like you're supposed to.

Blood.

Blood.

Blood! Bonnie practically leapt from the bathtub.

She stormed dripping through the hall to her closet to find suitable clothes. She'd been sporting garments that were more comfortable than they were impressive, stretchy waistband things, leggings, jeggings, t-shirts, loose sundresses and the like, the last few months. It was now time, she believed, to look fit for a guest. She decided on a long-sleeved dress that flared out in tight enough waves to exhale sophistication but at a level just high enough on the thigh to yell for some long awaited leering. She loved the dress for how it blended casual with elegant, but its biggest selling point was that the blood red color of its weighty fabric honored her brilliant idea.

If Kai really was in town teasing her witchy senses, he would definitely drop the games for a healthy offering of blood. He was, after all, a vampire. A newer one, at that. Being stuck in a prison world, he probably hadn't been feeding like a good vampire should. Lucky for the both of them, Bonnie was feeling suicidal enough to test it. That was how she ended up standing outside, at night, dressed to kill and well aware that she could _be_ killed with her bleeding hand outstretched, so hopeful she had to shoulder a tear away from one eye and glare boldly into the darkness around her.

She waited.

She waited so tensely that it seemed each breath took a minute to exit or enter her lungs. Maybe it was the slice numbing her palm, but she did notice a warming sensation sachet her hand from the fingertips inward. It reached her wrist just as she felt the same warmth begin at her other hand. It spread further into her body, elating her with its truth. It filled her, and she knew.

It happened so quickly there was no transition between the dark woods in front of her, and then a man blocking her view of them. He wasn't there, and then he darkly was, gripping her blood-dripping wrist tight as a steel cuff in his fist. He met her surprised look with a glare, and it was black-eyed.

It worked.

"Kai!" she gasped.


	3. Chapter 3

Perhaps it was thirst. Bonnie waited for the color to return to his eyes and when they didn't, she realized they probably wouldn't. In her fear, she was reminded of everything she felt before he left her alone: she hated him. More importantly, the vacancy in his eyes and the eager saliva spreading between his baring fangs suggested she run like hell.

With her free hand, she shot him a throaty spell and his hold on her loosened just enough. The porch was only a short dash behind her and if she guessed correctly with her fingers crossed, he wouldn't be able to follow her through the front door. So she left him in a temporary cripple and fled.

Inside her Gram's house, she slammed the door and whipped around to stare through the peephole. He was there in an instant, his hunt-mode shoulders filling his black hooded sweatshirt. His brown hair was tousled and his jaw nearly unhinged in apparent desperation.

"Bonnie," he growled, and she felt his voice vibrate the wood of the door, running her through with the familiar fear of Malachai Parker.

Yes, she had missed him. But she saw already that it was only for the sake of missing someone. Now that he was back, she wished he'd leave her alone again. She hated herself for ever thinking his abrasive company would be better than solitude. If only she'd gotten a grip before losing the handle completely.

"Bonnie," he said again, sounding less like a bloodthirsty vampire and more like the regular monster she knew. "Open the door."

Through the peephole, she stared into his demonic eyes, little abysses looking to absorb nothing but her. But he wasn't trying to get in, and that meant she was safe. Anxious as she was for him to go away, she realized how full the hum of his presence had become. She could feel him so strongly and despite the undesirable circumstances it was exhilarating. Just to soak it in, she placed her palms flat against the door on either side of her head while she watched him. Seconds later, he placed his own hands on the door in the same way and in the same places, mirroring her. If not for the door, they could've been touching.

"I can feel you," he said. Bonnie felt her breath catch in her throat and she pulled her hands away, curling them into her chest. "Please open the door," he went on.

"You're not you," she said.

He looked into the peephole, back at her. She knew he shouldn't be able to see her from his end, but she felt his gaze unquestionably.

"Would you open the door if I was?"

Having seen him this way and come to the understanding that missing him was a weakness of the past, she didn't think she would. But she took too long to answer. He growled her name again, louder, and shoved his hands into the door, clawing the wood into splinters. She backed up at the sound of it cracking, just in time for his second shove to knock the door off its hinges entirely. It fell into the house, swiping pictures off the foyer wall to snap and shatter.

The porchlight behind his figure cast a menacing shadow across the fallen door. He remained still, looking in at her desperately through the scared up dust seeking its settle. Seeing him tore her heart into a panic, as if visibility alone broke the invitation barrier. The end of the hunger faded from his eyes as the blackness left them and the irises returned. _There he is._

"You _can't_ come in," Bonnie urged through clenched jaws.

"Fine. I don't want to anyway," he retorted with a hint of his former sass. "I just wanna talk to you."

"Now? After all this time?"

"I've been waiting for the right…"

"Where did you go?" she interrupted. "Where have you been?" her voice surprised her by cracking. Her throat was dry. Her eyes were wet.

"It doesn't matter."

"You're right. It doesn't. Because you're going back. I don't want to see you."

"Bonnie…" he pleaded, his voice soft, eyes now sincere. All a ruse, she assumed.

"This is _my_ town. You can have the whole world, I don't care. But you can't have _my_ town. You have to go."

"I know you hate me…"

"Damn right I do."

"But I know you can't live without me."

She narrowed her eyes. "Wow. You're batshit."

"I mean it literally, Bonnie. This might be your town, but it's my hell. You will go through time and all the other motions just as if you're on the outside. You'll get older. You'll get sick. I know what it's like to be stuck by yourself, but you'll be stuck by yourself with the health of a mortal witch. And I'd give you…a year, tops. Need I remind you what happened last time you were stuck alone in a prison world? You'll lose it."

"I already have," she said matter-of-factly and crossed her arms. "And I'm doing just fine."

"Clearly," he said, lifting his eyebrows and glancing at her bloody hand. The glance lingered just long enough for a few capillaries of thirst to busy up underneath his eyes. He closed them quickly to collect himself before continuing.

"Why do you even care?"

Too many seconds passed before he answered, "Because I need you more."

"Ok, goodnight," she dismissed, and began to walk away. "Please be gone in the morning."

"I won't be," he said. "I will stand right here until I get what I want."

"I hope you like standing."

"You're not even gonna ask me what I want? Rude."

She rolled her eyes and went to walk away again.

"Bonnie, please!" he called. "I wanna make a deal with you."

"Oh?" She iced her tone before continuing, "What could you possibly have to offer me? Another stab wound? Another demolished friendship? Well I'm already hurting and I'm already alone. But thanks."

"I can get us back."

She scoffed, "First of all, _us_? _No_. Second, I don't believe you."

"Whew," Kai flashed a wide smile, "Good thing, because that was totally an empty statement."

"Are you serious right now?"

"Look, Bonnie. All cards on the table, I really want to hurt you right now because you're being so difficult. But I'm not going to. Promise. So stop kidding yourself because you're not fooling me. You're miserable. And you know what they say about misery, don't you?"

"I will never love your company."

"Not even if I make you brownies? Cook you dinner? Rent a movie, the whole nine? I mean let's face it, we're fucked. Might as well make it count. I'll even try not to talk so much."

Bonnie uncrossed and re-crossed her arms, pumping her hip out to the side and sighing. He was never going away. "And what do you get for being so saintly?"

"Nothing," he swore, with the beginnings of a telltale smirk dragging up the corner of his lips.

"Oh, please. Malachai Parker doesn't do charity." Bonnie freed one of her arms in preparation. "I know you have dirt, don't make me _dig,"_ she growled, extending her arm and twisting her hand, magically making Kai wince and clutch his stomach in what appeared to be excruciating pain. She allowed herself a small, sadistic smile at the sight of him doubling over before releasing him and finishing her sentence, "it out of you."

Kai breathed and regained his composure, and then his dignity with an impressed chuckle. His eyes flicked up to meet hers. "You're cute when you're feisty."

"What do you want, Kai?" she pressed, washing her face of all expression to let him know she was officially done with his beating around the bush.

His eyes dropped to the ground, smirk following suit. He hesitated for a moment. "It's…complicated. I need…I'm just…so…hungry."

Bonnie narrowed her eyes. "Come again?"

"There are tons of blood bags everywhere you go. They're all refrigerated, relatively in date, you can totally pop them in the microwave to… you know… pretend it's worth it, it's just…so… _gross_."

"It sounds like you're asking me if you can suck my blood," she said, whipping her attitude back out.

"Would that be weird?"

"No, not at all. I only hate your guts. Why would that stop me from letting you put your constantly moving mouth on me and then break your stupid promise not to hurt me?"

"But on the bright side, would it not make good on the part where I promised to talk less?"

She knew she shouldn't be surprised or offended that he was asking her this favor. She was the one who first laid blood on the table to trick him out of hiding. "You're…ridiculous."

"No," he said in a mildly hurt tone, "I'm lonely. And hangry. And I _need_ to call a truce with you. I _need_ you to do this." He started breathing faster as he rambled, revealing a little more teeth with each word, and it didn't seem like he was intending to. "I _need_ blood." He looked up earnestly from his rant, into her eyes. "I need you."

All this mood gave her pause. She watched him panting at her after pouring his proverbial heart out. It was plain to her that he meant most of the things he was saying. Would turning him away now equal in pain everything he had done to her?

 _Hardly._

"You're practically drooling over me," she drawled, showing him that she was not intrigued by his attempted pathos.

The beat was instant. He sighed and sharpened up his posture. "It's okay, you can say no. Totally understand."

"What happened to, 'I'm standing here until I get what I want'?"

"Just forget it. It's fine. If you're not into it, you're not into it. Honestly I was getting pretty done with the whole lone wolf thing, and if I could just hang around and annoy you without the hunger, I would. But I can't make it go away and I can't play nice while I'm fucking dying to know how you taste. So, I guess I have to be the one that goes away." She saw his body language shift. He was getting ready to leave finally. "Oh, if you need me I'll be international, cold blood's better outsourced for some reason. No guarantees on which country, I have an insatiable lust for entertainment and America's pretty boring without its fucked up nightlife."

He hopped down from her porch and threw her a smile, "Catch ya on the flip, B-side." And with that, he started walking. She knew damn well he was bluffing. He wanted to feed too badly to really leave.

And still…

She felt her body's witchy jubilation fade with his growing distance. It was like a furnace going out and cold slowly creeping in, or light from another room dimming as a door swings closed, or like blood leaving the body from its thickest canal. She knew all of these feelings separately. Separately, they were bearable. Together, they left her hopeless. She had so many questions.

"Kai!" she called. Her boots made woody clunks as she stepped delicately over her fallen front door and stood in the door frame. He was halfway down the street, _the bastard_ , walking at human pace because he was so conceited to believe that she would actually do what she was about to do. She called his name again. He didn't turn around, even though she was certain he could hear her quite clearly. He was going to make her work for it. Because he knew, and she knew, he was right. He needed her to admit it to herself by taking a step: she wouldn't stand a chance by herself here, and she didn't want to try anymore. No matter the cost of company.

Abandoning all good sense, she humored him and took that first step out of the house. She broke into a sprint after him and he still wouldn't turn around. She slowed down a tentative few yards behind him and said his name again before he stopped dead in the road, turned slightly and vamp-ported to standing right in front of her. Her heart skipped a beat but she stood her ground, glaring up at him. He said in a way that feigned surprise, "Bonnie! I must not have heard you. What's up?"

She sighed. "I need a drink."


	4. Chapter 4

"I'm glad you came around," Kai said, pouring himself a dark beer from the tap.

They chose to take advantage of the desolate Mystic Grill. Bonnie had never thought of it before, just walking in and pouring herself a free drink, or ten. Kai even snuck into the back and kicked on the sound system. She supposed she had a lot to learn about prison world living from the prison world connoisseur.

With his beer, he sat one stool away from her, leaving a respectful amount of personal space as if they were strangers. He glanced at her wounded hand and she tucked it protectively under the bar, out of sight. He had asked her to wrap it the moment they entered the enclosed space of the bar together, and she did as recommended, but she still felt the tension of hunger making his magic feel sharp. It was cause for caution.

"To loneliness," Kai said, holding his beer up. She hesitantly raised the blonde ale he'd poured for her and their glasses clinked. She watched him take his first sip before taking hers.

"Kai," she said.

"Bonnie," he responded.

"Why are we here?"

He glanced around, "I thought you needed a drink."

"You know what I mean. How did this happen to you…to us?"

He shrugged. "I don't know."

She scratched mindlessly at the condensation on her cold glass. "I need to know. It doesn't feel right. It shouldn't have been possible. You _killed_ everyone. I've been thinking about it a lot and reading through all these grimoires but I can't…fathom. Dead witches don't do spells."

"Not without a living one to channel them," he muttered.

"Was someone else there?"

He shrugged again, "I was looking at you." Bonnie felt an odd wisp run through her. It was quickly forgotten.

"They did die violently, where we were." Bonnie remembered channeling power from the witches who burned; the magnitude of their suffering cursed the very ground they died upon. Was it possible that someone channeled the deathly power of the Gemini Coven to spell their leader into the prison world?

"I don't know, Bonnie. Maybe something I did kick-started the spell, like it was hanging in the balance, just waiting for me to fuck up. It's a sore topic and I can't find an ascendant, so...moving on."

"Is that where you've been? Looking for an ascendant?"

Kai was distracted by the menu on the bar in front of him. "Ooh, they added nachos sometime in the last 18 years."

Bonnie frowned, "You're not interested in even _trying_ to get back anymore?"

"Back to what?"

Bonnie opened her mouth to list off all of the things she herself missed, things she would have in common with almost any given person, but stopped herself. Kai, special case that he was, had little to return to.

After some consideration though, his prospects almost rivaled hers.

He took a tight-jawed drink from his beer, and she took the opportunity to take another miserable sip from her own while she eyed him.

"Suspicious, much?" he asked without throwing her so much as a glance.

"Still don't trust you. I probably never will."

"You probably shouldn't."

She smiled bitterly and raised her glass a second time, a private toast to herself and her mistakes.

"Although you should have," he added, turning an accusing gaze her way, "Instead of ditching me in 1903."

She rolled her eyes. "We went over this. In 1903."

"I really was different. You just couldn't give me a chance."

"Ok, if you were actually different, why are you speaking in past tense? Whatever you sucked up from merging with Luke isn't just gonna go away. If you were actually a changed man-child, you wouldn't have killed your coven, and we wouldn't even be here."

"If you hadn't left me behind, we wouldn't be here."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"It means maybe if you took your chance to be the first person who's ever believed in me, I wouldn't have lashed out."

"Please. Take responsibility for your actions."

"Likewise. I take responsibility, gladly. Yes, I killed my family. Yes, I killed a sprinkle of strangers along the way. Yes, I took the cookies from the cookie jar. And yeah, I hurt you. All a means to an end."

"And you'd do it again."

He shrugged, "If any other ends required means. But I doubt that would happen. And actually, you getting hurt was never instrumental, it was never the means to any of the damned ends. Until the end," he admitted. "Hurting you…kind of important. Had to see if you meant anything to Damon. Sorry. I guess."

The reminder of Damon's betrayal seared her heart. How dare he mention it? Through gritted teeth, she breathed, "Everything that comes out of your mouth…" A lightbulb in the lamp above them burst. Hearing the tiny fragments of glass litter the bowl of the lamp checked her.

He went on. "You never cared what hurt me, so I returned the notion. But that's done and I'm over it. This is now. Truce. Clean slate."

"God I shouldn't be here with you. I'm so stupid."

"Bonnie. Why would I do anything that would jeopardize having a relationship with the only girl in the world?"

"I'll feed you. But we're not friends. This won't be a relationship. You have to relate to somebody before a relationship is possible. And as you've established, you can't relate to people. Whatever you did or didn't absorb from Luke."

"Oh, we relate," he smiled. "I'm the pig and you're the slop. You're going to hate it and love torturing me, and I'm going to love it, that and torturing you back." She glared and he quickly added, "Without hurting you, of course. We have an arrangement, Bon, therefore we have a relationship."

She shook her head incredulously, "What the fuck ever. Freak."

He shrank visibly at that one biting word, turning his attention down. To his beer, he said, "The feelings are still there, Bonnie. It just sucked to get my brand new feelings hurt, so I put them away for safe keeping."

Bonnie felt a twinge of guilt at his words, remembering too late that his family used to call him a freak for being a siphon instead of the substantial warlock that was expected of him. She couldn't tell if he was faking the hurt and she couldn't be sure if he really did hold her in high esteem at some point. In 1903, she had abandoned him to a fate she thought was worse than death, hoping he would suffer. And she had changed from the suffering he'd caused her first in 1994, but she shouldn't have let it darken her so deeply. Bonnie Bennett wasn't a cruel witch. She hated that he made her so.

She wanted to feel pain. She wanted to be punished for hurting him, even if he deserved what she'd done to him. There needed to be a leveling out between them, set in the eyes of each other. Though something told her they would never be equal, and if they strived to justify their actions, to decide who did or didn't deserve this or that wound or apology, they would end up killing each other. At the very least, she wanted to apologize for calling him that word.

She quickly downed the rest of her beer and banged the empty glass on the bar.

"More?" he smirked.

"I got it," she said.

On the other side of the bar, she poured herself a shot of vodka. She met his gaze before throwing it back and pouring a second shot. If she wasn't mistaken, she saw a hungry glint in his eyes just as she threw back the second shot. The way he looked at her… She took a third shot, set the glass down and focused her booze-blurry eyes on his.

She walked back around the bar. He stood as she reached his stool and they faced each other rather awkwardly. Like an apology, she gifted him her upturned, bleeding palm.


	5. Chapter 5

"Should I sit down?"

"Stand."

"I might lose my balance."

"I'll hold you up."

"You're twisting my arm," she complained, just as his lips grazed her bleeding palm. Bonnie felt the breeze of Kai's sigh like ice on her open wound.

"I'm just hungry."

She blanched, "Don't say it like that. Say you're thirsty at least. _Hungry_ makes me feel like a piece of meat."

"Aren't you?" he smirked.

She jerked her arm out of his hands. "Be nice, or I'll walk out that door and you'll never get fresh blood again for the rest of your pathetic eternity here."

"Fine. Sorry?"

"Just get it over with."

She held her arm out again and he wrapped his hands around her elbow and wrist. He lowered his mouth. She winced and grasped for another way to stall him. "Don't you think I should have some orange juice or something? It's pretty standard at blood drives. And I'm tipsy. My blood is thinner, I should have something."

He rolled his eyes. She was content to annoy him but inwardly she chided herself. She'd bled before. She'd sliced her own palm for magic more times than she could count. And she was no stranger to vampire assault. So why was relinquishing an agreed amount of blood to Kai so nerve-wracking?

A minute later, she held a glass of orange juice he had poured her from the bar gun, and he was watching her gulp it down, his mouth open in want. He pried it from her hands mid-sip. "You should save the rest for after," he said as he set the glass on the bar and resumed.

"Ow," she snapped at him.

"I haven't even bitten you yet," he said, exasperated.

"Well stop twisting my arm."

"You know, if you're finding it difficult to get comfortable, there is a better place I could eat… _drink_ …from."

"No."

"Just no?"

"No. You're not touching my neck, no way."

"I was imagining your deep femoral artery, but carotid would be…nice. Too. And quicker. Than this." He returned her hand limply to her lap, apparently glad to be rid of it.

"No."

He glanced longingly at her neck. "Can I please just…" He supplemented his starving loss for words with a flustered grunt. "Just a nip?"

"No."

"Can I just lick it?"

"Ew. No. My hand is prepped. I don't want another wound."

"I'll heal you," he said, looking too sincerely into her eyes. "You'd probably rather not watch this anyway, right?" He took a half-step closer to her and she felt her nerves unraveling. The proximity had her skin in a nearly numbing tingle. Just for the slightest relief, she shuffled backward an inch. He continued in a softer voice, "I mean, carotid or femoral, I'll be in and out. It'll take seven seconds, tops. Maybe fifteen. Not sure now that I try to break it down, I never really got a chance to feed on the outside. …So what do you think? Carotid? Femoral? Ultimately your pick, I can't say which one I'd really prefer without being…"

"Stop!"

"Yes?"

"Fine."

"What?"

"You can…you know," she motioned to her neck. "Whatever just makes you stop talking."

"Can I bite your femoral if I stop singing?"

"What?"

He broke suddenly into an overconfident rendition of Pearl Jam's "Even Flow." It didn't last much longer than three seconds before Bonnie shrugged. "Ok, deal's off," she said.

"Oh, Bon, please," he begged with what Bonnie noticed to be a very impressive set of puppy eyes. "Carotid is good, I'm just excited, ok? We can save femoral for a rainy day."

She gave him a pinched smile. "You do that," she said, knowing perfectly well there never would be a rainy day. He mirrored her smile and shifted his body closer. Time for pain was nearing and she tensed. He picked up on this.

"Bonnie, it's gonna be fine." He placed one hand on her shoulder and tilted her head with the other. "You're doing a good thing. Just stay still for a minute."

The closer he leaned his head into the crook of her neck and the longer her nerves drew the seconds out, the less she thought it was a good thing she was doing. Why help the guy who had done so much harm? For his company? How could it be worth that much to her? How could her loneliness drive her to this level of desperation? She felt his teeth brush her skin and a throb of guilt followed. Was she letting herself go? Was she giving up on standards, or was reconciliation possible?

After 1994, she learned to trust herself above anyone else, and if feeding Kai was her choice then it must not be such a bad one. It occurred to her only then when she let her neck be tilted and gave willingly in to the destructively selfless act of feeding a monster: they were more alike than they chose to acknowledge. They were both set aside in their respective circles. They were both in a way left behind by family. They were both currently friendless. They were both bound in the same summery void, doomed to eternal solitude.

Kai ran the tip of his nose slowly along her neck in anticipation, inhaling the scent of lavender soap on her skin and the sweet blood dashing back and forth beneath it. He exhaled shakily and afforded her a disclaimer, "About hurting you…" and trailed off dangerously.

"I'm not an idiot," she compromised, equally shaky. "Just keep it within reason."

For a split second, she allowed the vampire effect, being the romantic this-might-kill-you-but-doesn't-it-feel-nice seduction type thing that psycho Kai Parker oddly wasn't excused from, pacify her. And she closed her eyes. Then she wondered, "Will you be able to stop?"

She felt his lips on her neck pull into a devilish grin, but he didn't let her question interrupt him this time.

A shrill gasp escaped her when his fangs broke the skin. On instinct, she tried to break away from him. On his instinct, he wrapped vampire strong arms in a hold around her and sank his bottom set in clear across her throat. He had both arteries tapped in his wide mouth and began to suck mercilessly.

She understood it was a desperate reaction. He was so thirsty. She felt his tongue thrush wet and warm against the plate of skin between his teeth, lapping as much of her essence as he could, though some did escape the corner of his stretched lips to flee wastefully down her clavicles. Mere seconds passed before his body and the heat and the hum that came with it aligned with hers and every inch of Bonnie was enveloped in him. She noticed his heart start to beat rapidly, breaths through his nose quicken, his grip tighten. He was losing himself.

His name dangled on her lips as she tried to speak, but in her pain she could only manage a high-pitched "Ha." His fangs burrowing so close to her vocal cords really affected her ability to speak. He showed no sign of having heard her peep. She raised a hand to give his shoulder a few warning slaps, which he also seemed not to register. She put both her hands one either side of his face in attempt to pry him loose and to this he did loosen his hold on her, but only to grab one of her wrists and pin it around her back. Violently, he hounded her against the bar, bending her back in a way that offered to snap her in half, slamming his other hand in a passion to the counter, busting the glass of orange juice. The lamps above began flickering, lightbulbs giving up and bursting one by one. Bonnie's pain ebbed away and back again in ferocious turns, and somewhere in between them she noticed she was feeling his hips pressing an unquestionable erection against her dress. It seemed to beg into the thin fabric between it and her pubic bone, sending an altogether different (though currently unimportant) message to Bonnie's brain.

Whatever that meant, he was killing her. It was time to resort to purposeful magic. She felt a defensive spell welling so strongly inside her she needn't utter a word to propel it. Briefly, Kai paused to breathe a pained grunt into her. The hand he kept on her wrist burned her skin and she felt the spell evaporate. He took it from her.

Now she was without magic, and she was weak. She hated herself for agreeing to this fatally foolish exchange.

"Kai," she garbled, her larynx bobbing in his mouth. She placed her hand on the back of his head, wanting to crush his skull but in her drained state all she could muster was a gentle grasp on him. His hair was soft between her fingers; she wondered if it would be the last thing she'd appreciate.

Suddenly she felt the long fangs ease out from her.

He released her and stepped away, keeping his head bowed and his back to her, slowly and tensely. Without his hold on her, her knees buckled.

Bonnie steadied herself against a bar stool, breathing, breathing, breathing. Two of each of her surroundings began unhurriedly blending into one. A familiar euphoria descended upon her. She knew better than to accept it, and shook her head. Kai wasn't saying anything, for once. But he wasn't thanking her and she hated that. And she would've hated being thanked, too, because he took her so close to the edge. He took her gift and ran with it, her life attached. Irritated, she looked over at him.

"You piece of shit," she rasped. The only movement he made in reaction was placing his hands over the back of his head. He was trying to ignore her.

"Hey," she snarled.

She saw her own blood drip onto the bar and mingle with shards of glass and orange juice. She didn't know why she was still there. Probably the fact that she needed help was a glaring given. When she considered standing and storming the hell out of there, darkness threatened the corners of her vision. So she waited. But there was something concerning about the way he hunched and breathed. Full of her blood and substantially invigorated, his aura cast a goading tide against her. Did he care what it cost her?

"Kai?" She looked to him helplessly. When he turned around, her heart dropped.

Veins of terrible hunger wormed down from his eyes that locked onto her predatorily.

He wasn't finished.

Lowly, he said, "You should run."

Adrenaline afforded her a lucky second wind. She loped as far as the park bench outside before the world turned sideways and her body acclimated. The ground didn't hurt when it slammed against her. What hurt more was her own blood, less in volume, screaming in her ears. The last thing she saw was a dreamy swirl of the stars above. Blackness soon swallowed.


	6. Chapter 6

When Bonnie opened her eyes, she had to squeeze them shut again. The sun's brightness penetrated. Blades of grass tickled her cheek. A light breeze caressed. Leaves chattered in the trees.

Her mouth was so dry. She could hardly swallow. When she tried, the pain in her neck came rushing back. But she was alive. Asleep on the ground in the middle of the town square, but alive. And thankfully without witnesses. Except one, somewhere.

Thinking of him made her eyes dart around. Where was he? Surely not near. Surely for his own safety he was nowhere near her.

Set on the ground somewhat close to her face was a clear plastic cup with a lid and straw. A sticky note on the side of the cup read in a chicken scratch scrawl: _Drink me_. Inside the cup: a sad amount of a viscous, dark red substance.

She conquered the task of sitting up and reached for the cup. The substance hardly sloshed when the cup shook in her weak hand. Wincing in anticipation of a fowl taste, Bonnie put her cracked lips on the straw. On the mental count of three, she sucked. She watched the red liquid travel shyly up the straw and tightened her throat when it hit her tongue. Vampire blood. Cold vampire blood. Cold Kai blood, coating the inside of her mouth. Her stomach lurched.

The instant she swallowed, the edges of the wounds on her neck and her hand prickled to life. That was his blood at work. Bonnie couldn't resist watching the skin on her hand fiber itself back together. She liked the tickle of the healing at her skin's final clasp. It was going to be ok. For the moment.

Bonnie walked home leisurely swirling the cup of blood in one hand. It could've been any other day, any other stroll through town with an iced coffee. Nature, even in its bound pattern, seemed attentive to the witch's restoration, as if to coddle her after experiencing near death. The light wind urged her home while the sun continued its open armed beams of light upon her as it crossed the sky. If there were birds, she knew they would be singing for her. She caught herself occasionally, and too late, taking extra sips of blood from the cup. It didn't taste like blood to her, she was realizing. She knew that it was for sure blood, but it had a sweet hint that she for some reason couldn't resist. The cup was empty by the time she hit her street, and she felt indisputably amazing. It was a beautiful day.

The day's color dimmed a hue when she reached her Gram's house and her eyes fell on the Styrofoam box, complete with a sticky note, waiting on the porch.

Her boots clunked hesitantly up the wood steps. She crouched down to read more of the same messy scrawl: _Eat me. LOL_

Swallowing against another expectant contraction in her throat, Bonnie lifted the lid on the box.

A slice of pumpkin pie. _What the fuck_.

She gave up. Pie sounded great after a night in Hell with the devil himself. She sat on the top step, picked up the piece of pie and ate it like a slice of pizza, watching the trees sway. Afterward, a wave of drowsiness all but took over her and she passed out on her living room couch.

* * *

Scraping. Thunks. More scraping. Tinkering.

Bonnie's eyes flipped open to nothing. The house was dark. She had slept all day. The strange noises continued. She bolted up and looked toward the sound. The porchlight shone in through the hole in her living room where a door used to be. A man's hands cut across the space and straightened a different, detached door against the front of her house. Fury claimed her.

"You've got some nerve showing up here so soon," she said, crossing the living room to stand in the foyer atop the old door that still lay there.

He suppressed a laugh when he saw her. "Yesterday's clothes? That's sanitary."

She held her hand out to her side and willed a wooden shred from the broken door up through the air and caught it in her hand, clenching the weapon in its splintery power. She brandished it in Kai's direction. "Get off of my porch."

He laughed, "Ok, farmer Bonbon."

Bonnie wouldn't be tested. With all her anger, there was no room inside her for fear. She stepped through the doorway, toeing her path to him.

"Whoa, look who's stepped into the ring," Kai mocked. "She's outside, she's so brave."

He didn't seem to believe she intended to do anything with the wood sliver in her hand. To prove him wrong, she feigned defeat and lowered her arm. After another suppressed laugh from him, she plunged the wood up into his front, between the ribs, encroaching on his heart. The look on his face was enough to satisfy her, but she drew out her pleasure.

"Bonnie, don't," he croaked.

"Why not? You'll just regenerate," she said pleasantly, shifting the wood a tickle closer to his heart. He wrapped his hands around her assaulting arm and she felt the burn of his siphoning, and a subsequent ringing in her head. She let go of the wood to let it jut out from his body on its own.

She stepped back from him and sat on the wicker porch sofa, watching him gently tug the wood out from his flesh. When he was finished, he threw her a reprieved look and dropped the sliver, dashing a future bloodstain to her Grams' porch.

"I'll pretend you just hated my shirt," he said.

"What do you think you're doing?"

Kai smiled at her, pulling some thick door pins out of his pocket. "What does it look like?"

"In the dead of night?"

"Yeah, those fancy daylight rings are made with Bennett magic. I would be proud to say I've figured that spell out, but I haven't. And I would ask for your help, but I know you won't say yes."

"At least you know one thing."

Kai ignored her and continued fitting the new door in the frame.

"So is this your way of apologizing?"

"Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Maybe I'm just fixing your door. And if it was an apology, you strike me as a baby steps kind of forgiver, so expect more favors and consider me a hot chocolate, cause I'm fucking whipped."

"Whipped, you say?" She prepared herself to dissect his statement in light of recent events and show him how wrong he was.

"Yeah," he laughed, "You taste amazing. And I feel great. No way am I fucking that up."

She blanched, not sure if she was embarrassed or flattered. The only way she knew how to react was in retaliation.

"You almost killed me, Kai. What makes you think it's ever happening again?"

"I'll be honest. Last night got a little out of hand. But throw me a bone, ok, that's like one of the first times I've ever fed. As soon as you left, I got it under control. Next time will be different. Now would you mind pushing that other door out?"

Fifteen minutes later, the brand new door swung swiftly open and closed as Kai tested it, a small smile on his lips, admiring his work. Bonnie raised her eyebrows and commented, "I thought you only knew how to break and ruin things."

"When you spend years alone with a bad temper someone has to fix what you break."

Bonnie rose from her spot and stepped back into her house, trailing her fingers along the new red door. The woodwork was nice. It must have been expensive… not that he paid for it. She stopped just inside, safe from his reach and glanced up at him, trying to appear thankful without actually having to thank him.

Kai returned her gaze with a cutting half smile and said, "Now all you have to do is invite me in."

She glanced down at the glaring bloodspot in his shirt, the rip barely concealing his healed abdomen. "If I say no, are you going to huff and puff and punch the door down?"

"Not so soon after putting it up."

"You can't come in, Kai. Sorry, not sorry."

He rolled his eyes and shook the rejection off with a twist of his shoulders. Against her better judgement, she felt the desire to supplement whatever hurt feelings he may or not have held inside him. She asked, "When will you be hungry again?"

An honest smile graced his face, apparent appreciation unshackling Bonnie from her guilt like she hoped it would.

"I'm always hungry," he admitted.

"I need a week."

"Fine. Wednesday. Dinner at my place."

"Your place?"

"Foreclosure on Jubilee."

She shuddered. All that time she spent with his hum drilling into her senses, he'd been dwelling only two streets away. "Don't you think we should meet somewhere more neutral?"

"I want to cook for you. Without stabbing you afterward. I'm thinking gourmet mac n cheese, bottled beer, a low budget horror movie afterward while I give you the longest, most dedicated back rub you've ever had. And then chew on your neck for a second."

She hissed her polite disapproval.

"Ok, a high budget romantic comedy," he amended.

She pursed her lips, still unamused.

"Highlander. Everybody loves Highlander."

"No they don't."

"You pick the movie, then. I still have 18 years of cinematic history to catch up on."

"Fine."


	7. Chapter 7

She didn't see him for the entire week, except for the time he sprinted past her house just before dawn. She only woke up to look out the window because her magic pricked up, and she cursed when she saw him, jogging. For what reason, she didn't know. Vampires don't need exercise. Yet there he was, tennis shoes, track shorts, ipod strapped to his arm and earbuds stringing from his ears, shirtless. He didn't pay her house a glance as he passed, but she suspected he knew she was watching anyway. Why else would his incoming magic poke at hers?

The same tingle of his approach happened again the next dawn, but she ignored it. It was now Wednesday and she would see him that evening.

Embarrassingly, she spent most of her sunlight hours deciding what look to show up on his doorstep in. She was having one of those days where nothing fit comfortably or looked right. It wasn't PMS. She hadn't menstruated her whole time in this prison world, but she assumed the lack of cycle was stress-related and dismissed the non-issue entirely. No, her wardrobe indecision was caused by excitement, and she resented it. She resented that she was torn between wearing a short skirt to win the attention she craved or wearing pants and layered tops to send the right message. He had mentioned watching a movie, which meant that if he hadn't already pissed her off there would come a time in the night when they would be sitting on a couch together, in potential darkness or dimness. _Pants it is_.

Then there was the question of make-up. It was a dinner, which called for more eye work to bring her features out, but there remained a part of her that wanted to do the opposite of stand out to him.

Her hair was still short, so thankfully there wasn't much she could do with that.

Music played loudly while she got ready. It balanced her. It kept her mind from warring and treading back to the skirt after she put on the black leggings. To give herself a little bit of a sexy boost without going too far, she chose high wedged boots that matched her grey long sleeved shirt. When the ensemble was complete, it was sufficiently neutral.

The foreclosed house on Jubilee was yellow. One of the older structures in the neighborhood, it stood in cower among the others, just slightly tilted to the left. Though it was narrow and its meager second story looked from the outside like an attic, Bonnie could tell by the dedicatedly vibrant yellow paint and the unchipped white trim that the inside would boast renovations. She stepped up onto the porch, comparably much smaller than her Grams', though it held together attractively with two simple white columns. The setting sun also laid its touches on the entrance. However the house charmed her, Kai's hum quivered through the wood and her heart began pounding its protest.

She knocked.

"Hey, beautiful," Kai smiled when he opened the front door and she grimaced. He was wearing his usual: jeans and t-shirt, a thoughtless combination she wished she had the aloofness to consider.

Bonnie merely offered him a dark, "Hi." It was hard to be cheerful when she felt like his catering.

"Come inside," he said, making a big, smug show of his welcome. Feeling his magic greet hers with clenching fingers, she stepped into his house. _Mistake number one_ , she thought to herself.

The inside of his house was as expected. Generic. Like the outside, it didn't scream Kai Parker so much as it screamed Façade, or Run. All the oak furniture matched and was clearly stolen from another house. Few decorations held the foyer together with the living room to the left or the open kitchen to the right. The wall going up the staircase lacked any kind of wall hanging. The place was pure showroom, designed by someone who hadn't gotten the hang of ambience yet. But music played softly in the background and even though it was the same grunge neither of them could escape in 1994, he was trying.

Kai led her to the kitchen. "Can I get you anything to drink? Vodka?"

"Tea?" she asked.

"No tea. Gin?"

"Water's fine."

"Beer it is," he concluded, and handed her a bottle. She accepted it grimly. "Oh, sorry," he said, taking the bottle back and twisting the cap off before handing it back to her. "Manners," he shook his head, chuckling.

Standing awkwardly unsure of what to do with herself, Bonnie took a reluctant swig of her beer while he turned to stir the contents of a boiling pot. She noticed a tree from his front yard reaching in with its leaves through the window above the sink. It was the wind, but she couldn't ignore that it felt like nature calling her to safety.

Kai filled a glass with water and set it on the island in front of her, offering her another of his rare looks where the honesty inside him came to the surface gasping for air. Or maybe it was the Luke inside him. Whatever it was, at least something in him felt sorry. Recognizing the good deed, Bonnie allowed herself a small smile in return, but he had already turned back to his cooking.

"How have you been?" he asked the stove.

"Small talk won't suit us," Bonnie responded.

"Thank god," he laughed. Then he turned to her, nibbling an al dente macaroni noodle in his smirk. His eyes beamed at her.

"What?"

"Nothing," he insisted.

They ate in mostly silence, sitting in stools across from each other at the island. Bonnie's appetite seemed to escape her, so she took small bites every few minutes, between gulps of beer. She passed time tracing her finger along the grout between the little square black tiles in the island's surface, trying to ignore his calculating eyes on her. He, on the other hand, shoveled spoonful after spoonful of mac n cheese into his mouth and swallowed three beers, watching her all the while. Pathetic attempts at conversation, such as, "What's the deal with music nowadays? It's all machiney and no real instruments," or, "Did you see the Johnsons' new lawn decorations? Killing it this year," failed to amuse Bonnie.

Too soon they were dropped into the setting she had been dreading. Kai turned off the music and told her to make herself at home on the couch. She squeezed herself into the couch's corner, hoping to end up as far as possible from wherever he was going to sit, and crossed all her limbs in sophisticated quarantine. She had brought The Craft on DVD, and he was setting that up. She didn't know why that movie amused her… she was mainly hoping it would keep Kai interested.

"You can take your boots off," he offered. "Hot as they look on you, I want you to be comfortable."

"I'm fine," she said. Kai waved the television on.

"Planning to run away?" he said, making his way to the couch.

"Why don't you take _your_ shoes off?" she said, causing him to glance down at his Converse hi tops. He merely shook his head and dropped the subject.

Instead of sitting on the opposite end of the couch like she'd hoped, he sat in the middle. She bristled at the nearness, purposely not looking at him. With some precise hand movements, he dimmed all the lights in their wall fixtures. Flames sprung up from candles around the room. Two unopened beers floated in from the kitchen for him to twist the caps off and hand one to Bonnie. Then the movie started. So his ambience skills were improving, she admitted inwardly. Despite her nerves, the house threatened to cozy her to sleepiness. But the truth of their so-called relationship came crashing in on any potential comfort, and she needed more than beer.

"I'll take that gin now," she stated flatly, surprising Kai.

"Sure," he said, rising to fetch the more complicated concoction. But she stopped him.

"Let me," she said, waving her fingers in the direction of the kitchen. The green liter of gin floated in just as the beers had.

"Don't you want ice? And a glass?" he asked, amused.

"I'll drink from the bottle."

"Want me to finish your beer?"

"Nope. I'll drink that too."

Anyone else might've been offended by Bonnie's obvious aversion to being sober in his company. She was perfectly aware that she was being an asshole. But Kai didn't seem to mind. On the contrary, he seemed pleased.

For the first half hour of the movie, Kai paid attention. Bonnie found herself enjoying his enjoyment, how the movie seemed to entertain him, even if he mostly made his fun. It was filmed in the nineties, not long after he was locked away, so the culture portrayed was familiar to him in a few ways. Bottom line, each time she looked at him, he was focused on the television and not on her, so she let herself relax a little for once. She blinked back mouthfuls of gin chased by grimacing mouthfuls of beer in a weird kind of peace, purposefully lowering her inhibitions. All the room's candle flames were soon happy, bright blurs in the dark and she still hated Kai, but with the temporary nonchalance needed to get through an evening with him.

Then he paused the movie.


	8. Chapter 8

She stiffened. He was looking at her, and he wasn't saying anything. She could see a glint of the hunger hanging behind his pupils. "What?" she said tonelessly, "Already?"

He shook his head, "You need more time."

"Then why the hell are you looking at me like that?"

"Like…what? I'm sorry," he tightened his eyes closed, regaining focus. "I was just looking at you. I just remembered that I promised you a back rub."

She sucked in a breath, aha-ing. "You don't need to do that."

"I think I do," he said honestly, setting his beer down on a side table. "I have a theory."

"That?" She swirled the last bit of her beer around the bottle, preparing herself to be unimpressed. As she shifted her body on the couch, she could feel alcohol weighing down her muscles, thickening her thoughts.

He held his hands out in front of himself, looking down at his own palms. "These hands," he said, "have been very bad hands. Maybe if I use them _kindly_ you'll stop acting like I'm about to attack you every time I move." He said that last part with a hint of venom. Apparently her stiffness really bothered him. He added, "It doesn't have to be weird, either. You seem pretty fucking uptight and I think you could use it."

"But you don't care if I'm uptight. You just want me where you want me."

He sighed and showed her a flat smile. "You got me." And with that he turned back to the TV.

Bonnie rolled her eyes. A back rub did sound nice. Even before her entrapment there, it had been a while since anybody offered her something like that. Her shoulders ached and the unreachable muscles along her spine cried for someone else's touch. She remembered hearing somewhere that physical contact, romantic, platonic or otherwise, correlated with health in human beings. And then there was the little detail of being almost drunk. "You're right," she confessed. "I could use it." Kai grinned, not hiding how pleased he was. Bonnie rose from her corner on the couch, steadying herself against the rush of gin and beer in her blood. Ignoring the eager reach of his aura, she buckled down cross-legged on the hardwood floor between his Conversed feet, her shoulders leveled with his knees.

Something about the way her hands shook, and how she had to lock them together in her lap to keep the tremor from radiating through her entire body, reminded her of being an innocent teenager. It reminded her of waiting to be touched for the first time. Were the circumstances not similar? She was waiting for an _enemy_ to lay his first kind hand on her. In the glass cabinets on the TV stand, she saw Kai's reflection wave the movie to continue playing, and then his head turn down at the girl sitting before him, beneath him, between him. A moment passed by them; he was indecisive on how to begin. She was forced to wonder if he had ever even done this before. It didn't seem like a Kai Parker type of activity, unless it was a ploy that led to something horrible. And the sly look on his face confirmed it for her. He must've sensed her watching him, because his eyes lifted and met with hers in their reflection. She quickly averted her eyes and glued them to the TV screen. And then her magic was tapped, not by a siphoning, but by the rough release of Kai's magic, flowing energetically through his hand now placed on her right shoulder. Every time their skin touched, whether it was calm, violent or accidental, his magic joined hers like oil in water. She would have to get used to that toxic exchange.

The first pinch of her skin between his thumb and forefinger, despite her being braced for it, took her out. A large breath fled her lungs and her head bowed to the pleasure of endorphins flurrying through her system. At the same instant of their release, all of the candle flames in the room stretched higher, brightening the room, for a fraction of a second. Kai's surprised laughter cut in, "Feel good?"

"Don't ruin it," she breathed, closing her eyes.

"I don't intend to, it's just, now I know what makes Bonnie Bennett surrender. It's cute."

"It's sad," she corrected, and then stifled a moan when he positioned his other hand on her and both of his thumbs dug beneath her shoulder blades.

"What's sad, that you're _that_ attention starved?"

"Shut up," she muttered.

"If a little back rub destroys you, I wonder what other things do."

"You're ruining it," she warned, hoping for her back's sake that he stopped talking. She didn't care how unwarranted his implication was. It didn't seem to bother her as much while his hands were making putty of her body, and her thoughts. Hopefully at least her principles remained intact for the duration of this disassembly he was about to take her through.

He dragged a deep line from her shoulders down her spine, causing a euphoric pain that took the breath out of her again. She had trouble getting it back as he continued that motion with unrelenting fervor, the strokes chopping her every breath into useless air.

"Breathe," he said incredulously, unable to contain his amusement.

"Pay attention to the movie," she scolded, "It's awesome."

"This is more awesome."

"Ugh, time to stop," she said, but made no move to indicate that she meant it.

"You don't want me to do that," he stated.

"No," she whined in agreement. "I just want you to stop talking."

His following silence made her feel a little guilty. But his hands never let her go, and their work never lost momentum. He went on rubbing her for the rest of the movie, most of which passed without either one paying attention. How the hands that had done so much damage could now make her skin feel loyal to their touch mystified and ashamed her. She didn't want it stop, she couldn't want that. He made her feel so good, she lost time. It seemed only a minute between crumbling under his first touch and looking up to find that the credits were rolling on the television. She fell back to earth just as the credit music stopped, and the TV flicked off, tumbling them into dark silence.

Kai's fingers traveled up from her shoulders to stroke the sides of her neck. He had fed her, watered her, watched her movie and helped her relax…now he was ready for his reward. She felt his readiness pooling in his fingertips. He pressed his need into her consciousness through thoughtful circles over her arteries. Even that felt good, but the question it asked depressed her. She was more willing to accept hours of him kneading her to earn the blood he wanted. The curtain of her hair was drawn aside as he pulled it back.

"Do you have a hair tie?" he asked. It was the first thing he'd said in an hour.

"No," she answered.

"That's ok. I can hold it."

Bonnie took a deep breath. The tremor returned to her hands, along with the weight in her chest. Her face, for some reason, began to feel hot.

"Don't be nervous," he said.

"I'm not."

"Your heart beat betrays you." His other hand, the one that wasn't pulling her hair, continued its soft exploration of her neck. He let his fingernails drag gently along the curve of the artery in reverence and she could feel his eyes loving this. The hand on her hair pulled, not too strongly, so that her head would follow its strings and open her neck to him. Behind her, he lowered his head down to rest on hers. The sheet of stubble on his chin grazed down the side of her face until he could run his lips in the same path his fingers had drawn. The passionate way he did this, and the way his breath changed, gave Bonnie a shudder. He noticed.

"What?" He breathed the question into her ear, making the alcohol in her body feel headier.

She hesitated before answering. "Why do you have to draw it out? Can't you just get on with it?"

"I can't help it. It's part of feeding. Delayed gratification. Maybe someday you'll understand."

She exhaled. "It's delayed pain for me. It's torture."

"Knowing that doesn't make me want to stop," he said into her neck. "Knowing that makes this better for me." She mistakenly let out a whimper against the tightness of her throat, and the fear being tacked through her heart. His next breath ghosted heavy over her rising goosebumps. "So does that," he whispered, still exhaling noisily as if about to lose control.

"You're freaking me out," she whispered.

"I know. It's ok. It's ok," he said between breaths.

"Just…"

"Ok."

A hot breath preceded the pain of his fangs popping her skin once more. His fingers knotted through her hair as he began suckling and she winced, but he complemented the discomfort with his left hand, which started to rub her shoulder like it had ten minutes earlier. The sudden addition of this unexpected pleasure made Bonnie choke out a wide-mouthed moan. Kai untangled his right hand from her hair and it spidered out over the round of her shoulder, rolling it in rhythmic circles before resting his thumb on the back of her neck while his fingers extended down her front. Her awareness honed in on his fingertips, slipping beneath her shirt to dig at her clavicle. She would have leaned out from this troublesome progression if not for his thumb still pressing at her most prominent vertebrae, steadying her posture for even bloodflow.

 _It's almost over_.

 _It's almost over_.

 _It's almost over_.

The straying fingers wrapped around the front of her neck as if preparing to choke her, but they didn't tighten. Bonnie felt the temperature in his hands rise as blood left her body to nourish his. She thought she was almost feeling sweat generate between his palm and her neck, but it could've been her own. It was hard to tell with how fervent the feed was becoming.

His left hand stopped rubbing her calm and dropped down to her mid-back, the other hand following. She heard his jaw click, felt his teeth deepen, and she knew they had reached the point where he would get lost if he didn't quit soon. Rather than withdraw from her flesh, his hands tightened on her ribcage and lifted her body quite easily up from the floor. She whimpered again at the searing shift of his fangs deep within her and at the sensation of his bottom fangs now coming into play. They lost their pressure, however, after her transplant from the floor onto his lap.

His pounding chest heated her back, hands worming their way around her middle, clutching her body more tightly to his. She couldn't comprehend the reason for this other than ease of access, more blood to mouth, him not having to hunch over her and that's what she swore to herself was happening.

 _Ease of access._

 _Ease of access_.

 _It's almost over._

She held onto his arms encasing her, trying to balance her weight on his supportive legs, and in the process noticed that she was again feeling that hardness from beneath his jeans. She twisted her hips to sidle another direction so she wouldn't feel it. As if realizing just then that he was crossing a line, Kai's jaws released her neck.

Bonnie shot to her feet immediately, finding that she was not as drained as the last time. She clutched her neck and stood her ground across the living room, watching him finger a stream of blood from his cheek into his mouth, both she and him panting. His eyes, after the color returned and the hunger receded, flicked up to hers. Neither one moved or spoke for a moment, something Bonnie imagined to be a post-feed standoff. _Would she run? Would he chase?_

Finally he broke the silence. "I'd say that was a success." Her lack of response elicited him to usher one out of her. "Don't you agree?"

"It was fine, until _that_ ," she said, gesturing to the unspeakable area between his thighs. "You need to get _that_ in check."

"Sorry?"

Bonnie pressed her features into an admonishing glare.

"I can't help that," he defended.

"Maybe just don't…" she trailed off, unsure of how to say what she wanted.

"Don't what?"

"Don't…touch me with it," was what ended up coming out, and Bonnie felt embarrassed. It wasn't that it bothered her all that much; she honestly felt a little complimented by the uncontrollable boner, but it was Kai, and it was awkward, and she forgot how to talk to people.

"Sure thing, Bon," he smirked.

"I've gotta go," she shook her head, trying to remember whether she brought a purse or not.

Kai rose from the couch. "Don't you want medicine?" He bared his fangs at her before biting into his own wrist and offering it out to her, bleeding and already fibering back together.

Bonnie snatched up her beer bottle. Kai raised an eyebrow in confusion. She brought the bottle's lip to his wrist and caught a few drops before he healed. She then tipped the bottle to her lips.

"Fine, be that way," he said. The little amount of blood dribbled onto her tongue. "Also, you might want to wear a darker shirt next time. Or a smock. Or a sexy strapless top or something, or nothing." Bonnie glanced down at her shirt and saw that he was talking about the large red blot on her left shoulder. There was no getting that stain out. The shirt was trash.

"Damn it," she cursed under her breath.

On her way out the door, Kai stopped her yet again.

"Hey," he said. She was tempted to keep walking, but she turned and humored him, biting her lip.

"I was just thinking," he started. "This doesn't have to be our only thing. Do you wanna like, hang out? In a couple days, or tomorrow."

"Why?"

He shrugged.

She gripped the strap of her bag tightly. "I don't think it's a good idea. We both have what we need. Let's leave it at that."

"Do we?" he asked, a tinge of possible hurt hiding behind his challenging eyes.

Bonnie took a selfish moment out of the conversation to mull over his very considerate question. Did she have what she needed? She needed to see another person's face and to talk to someone other than herself, and Kai provided for these needs without effort. But among the things Bonnie needed remained friends, laughter, to feel safe, a sense of purpose other than being Kai's livestock, a change in the weather, hope, feeling like she had a soul, to re-experience and reevaluate a multitude of cheap exchanges with strangers she took for granted, a pet cat, to be appreciated… No. She did not have what she needed.

"You do," she answered. "That's all that matters."

"Bonnie Sheila Bennett," Kai scolded, and her heart jumped fearfully to the sound of her full name. "This is an _arrangement_. What do you need?"

Nobody else ever demanded for Bonnie to make demands. That wasn't a thing. She stared at him, utterly disbelieving that the first person adamant to give her anything was the person she least liked. And he awaited her answer, his dead eyes not ready to waver from hers. Unfortunately, most of the things that came to mind were not things that Kai Parker could give to her, and she wasn't about to waste her time putting faith in him.

"Just thank me next time," she said. "I'll see you next Wednesday."

She turned and continued walking down his lawn.

"I'll be around," he called, "If you change your mind about hanging out." And she couldn't help but bite the inside of her cheek to keep herself from forming what would either be a secret smile or a tear-inducing frown. Something was happening to her. As she walked home, the high of another witch's presence let her go and she was able to analyze the events of that evening. A month ago, she wouldn't recognize herself, mixing with Kai, going to the place where he lived, eating with him, drinking with him, letting him touch her. _Idiot_. Emotions of all varieties filled Bonnie to the brim and she recognized the need to be tipped, to spill over before she drowned in herself.

When she made it home, she left the lights off. She locked the door and closed all the curtains. She shuffled to her bedroom. Kicked her boots carelessly into the closet. Undressed. Threw her bloody shirt to the floor in the corner of the room. Tucked herself in half naked. Sighed. And touched herself.

* * *

Kai couldn't get the taste of blood out of his mouth, or his mind.

It was only the second feeding, and what he'd said was true. It was a success. He didn't kill anyone. Or try to. But the desire willing his fingers to curl into his fists was maddening. Bonnie was already gone. Had been for at least an hour. And still the stinging resided in his gums. His fangs lay in permanent wait. Even though his stomach swelled with Bonnie's blood, he wanted _more._ And more than _more_ , he wanted to again die in the pleasure of his open lips on her neck, and to marvel at the quake it caused in her; to hear the little noises she made, for he couldn't tell if they were all in pain or if an undetected craving in her was finding its fill just like he was. One thing was certain: Bonnie Bennett hated him less. And that was a sure step in the preferred direction. No matter how much he liked the challenge.

Meanwhile, pie had to be the thing he bit into. And it sufficed just barely. After finishing off two slices, he laid on his bed, a twin mattress on the attic floor, no frame and no sheet. The feeling of blood and pie digesting together was less than pleasant. But he could still smell her on him. Some kind of sweet lotion or perfume rubbed off on him from her skin and, with his heightened senses, his room swirled with the scent of Bonnie.

The only light he needed while lost in thought was that of the moon outside the one circular window, glowing opaquely yet triumphantly behind a dusting of clouds. It whitened delicately the grey walls around him, the cold hardwood floor, the mangled crusts on his plate, the ascendant napping on his chest. He trailed his finger along its edges while he thought of Bonnie and wondered what she was doing, and wondered if she ever thought about him when she couldn't sleep at night.


	9. Chapter 9

Bonnie took a day.

Granted all of her days were days she could take, but this one in particular she knew she must spend sitting at her Grams' kitchen table with a cup of tea and a book, and a harsh session of self-reflection in between each chapter.

The sun bathed her through the kitchen windows. She didn't bother getting dressed but lounged in a loosely tied lilac robe of silk and black slip beneath. Her grandmother wouldn't be proud of her wardrobe choice, or of anything she'd done the night before.

After surrendering her blood, the very life force flowing through her to a monster of a man, she dragged herself home, collapsed on her bed and thrashed against her own hand to the idea of that same man fucking her.

She wasn't proud.

If any reasoning could be applied to her actions, she decided it was nature. Her body knew that Kai was the only man around and it responded accordingly. Especially after the different ways his body had interacted with hers that night. It should've come to no surprise when she finally rested her head in darkness and privacy to find that her underwear were soaking wet. They stung cold against her inner thighs. She didn't have to reach down to feel that her cunt was practically agape and saturated in want. When she realized it, she shook so violently her teeth chattered. Kai did this to her.

The guilt made her wetter. There would be no sleeping until she had an orgasm, so she conjured thoughts of Jeremy in attempt to save her soul. And it did, temporarily. But each time the Jeremy in her mind was on his mark and ready for instruction, a shadow fell out from the darker part of her heart, obscuring the good-natured strain with a sinful fantasy. She groped for Jeremy and all she could pull up from the murk of her lust was Kai. Kai, in all his glory, pounding that troublesome erection into her aching hole with abandon. He felt like a terrible ghost in her room, raking his fingers through her thoughts and wrecking everything. The only way to make him leave was to let him.

Bonnie had to bear through a shockwave just thinking about it. She was warm in her sunlit spot, but remembering his ghost hands on her body chilled her. She marked her place in her book and made her way to the small cabinet above the stove. She didn't know why she kept it in there… probably she couldn't do away with the notion that it should be kept hidden, even though no one was around to judge her. She found what she sought, returned to her seat, lit the joint and inhaled. Comprehension of her place in the world as she now knew it was always easier when she was high.

It wasn't often that she indulged in smoking of any kind. Alcohol was easier. But Mystic Falls was littered with weed and finding people's hiding spots was fun. She started collecting with the first stash she happened upon and now had what for her was potentially a lifetime supply. Though she suspected, in line with her growing drinking habit, her smoking might soon become a regular thing. Tolerating Kai and then own her ups and downs in relation to him necessitated any kind of altered mood she could achieve.

Getting high only disorganized her thought process and made her want to see him. She wanted to sit with him, talk with him, laugh like people are supposed to laugh, relate. She wanted to know about him. Everywhere he'd been in the world, everything he did in 1994. How many ways had he killed himself? What was he like when he was a child? Before all the pressure? Before he was cast aside? Did he have friends? Girlfriends? A celebrity crush? When did he lose his virginity? Of all the foods he stuffed his face with, what was his favorite? Favorite color? Favorite song ever?

The sudden adamant desire to know Kai agitated Bonnie. She wasn't herself when she considered liking him. Her instinct for self-preservation was to stamp out her curiosities and cut herself off from him as much as possible. To hold up what she'd said to him: it wasn't a good idea to see each other more than their weekly slot, his feeding time. And at those times, she would need the stone cold resolve of a grade school girl being mean to the boy she can't stop thinking about simply because she can't herself understand the changes she's going through.

The next time she fed him, she insisted on staying outside. It had been the agreed week since they saw each other, save for his nightly jogs past her house in which he made no attempt to see her, yet his passing magic treaded over hers as if stepping with his running shoes on her bare feet. It was irritating. This, in addition to the weird night the week before, and the even weirder high the next day in which she almost forgot how much she hated him, required that she keep her distance.

She knocked on his door at blue dusk, crossed her arms, pretended not to notice the smell of cooking when he opened up to invite her in, and shook her head. To his head cocked in confused curiosity, she began to unzip the red sweater she wore that day. She took a step back, slipping her shoulders and arms out of her sleeves to reveal that she had taken his advice and worn a strapless top.

Kai smirked at her skin. "What are you doing?" he asked.

Tying her sweater sleeves around her waist, she said, "Ringing the dinner bell."

Ignorant of her intention to leave, he didn't need to be told twice. He met her where she retreated, not bothering to hide from her the darkening in his eyes or the veins of agitation. The light wind cooled her shoulders and she shivered. She could see his chest fill with proud air when he looked at her, starved and eager, fangs descending, before dipping his mouth. He bit her rather hard this time. _Blame it on delight_. She found herself squeezing the back of his shirt in her fist. Her other arm she kept in a flexing right angle at her belly. Its purpose was to subtly keep space between them, should he embrace her in his usual frenzy.

When it was over, she made to leave. He asked where she was going and she explained that she wasn't ready to eat with him again. Not yet. He didn't like that. Brows were furrowed, the wind picked up, one witch's wrist was snatched up in the other's, a second ego was inflamed and a fire started. Orange little blazes licked out from his kitchen window and groped for the porch. She burned dinner. Kai reluctantly let go of her to cast a dampening spell on the fire burning a hole in the front of his house. Disgusted, Bonnie waited for him to turn his attention back to her so she could say, "This _arrangement_. This _relationship_. You suck at it."

A sneer was quick to play at one corner of his mouth. "Pun intended?" Infuriated and still bleeding, she took off. And he let her.

* * *

More than anything, he was hurt. Again. Because of Bonnie.

He had nothing but interest in her from the beginning and from the beginning she hated him. She made that clear. Her methods of doing so were just as brutal and careless as his; trying to kill him; insulting him; leaving him behind in a dangerous place. They were such a match. How could she not see it? Then again, he wasn't even sure that he wanted what most people wanted from tense boy-girl relationships. Love? Yeah, no. Not his style. He liked being around her. He liked biting her. He liked touching her and wanted her to touch him. Of course he wanted to do dirty things to her, and with her. That would be interesting. He both liked and disliked how much she disliked him. If there was a way to hold onto her fight and also attain her adoration, he would kill to know how. But none of the things that made his time worthwhile could continue if she wouldn't even have dinner with him. And to think of the food that went to waste for it.

Contrary to popular belief, his entire life was in fact not all about Bonnie. He found much revelry in his time alone and much satisfaction in defiling the world in 1994. Despite having earned a slight amount of humanity from merging with his brother, he still felt the same itch to destroy. Now he had a chance to re-destroy the world, with another person. He couldn't have chosen a better companion. Her magic was strong, as was her will. And he could see in her eyes that, whether she knew it or not, she was dark inside. Just like him. It was there the first time he saw her; the wicked in him recognized the wicked in her. He just had to know how deep it ran, how thick it was, what birthed it, what it tasted like. But Bonnie's damn principles stood proudly in the way.

Kai thought of these things while he jogged the neighborhood in his usual route. The closer he came to the house where Bonnie lived, the angrier he felt. Earbuds pounded music with the backbeat of his raging heart in his ears, thinking of all the ways the old Kai would've made Bonnie like him. He could kidnap her. Magically bind her to the inside of his house until she saw how awesome he was and didn't want to leave. Or tie her up in a car and just begin the World Destruction Tour right then. Show her amazing things. Teach her the bad spells he knew that she would secretly love to learn. He could twist her arm.

Her house was coming up. He had trouble breathing every time he came upon her gold magic, lying in a calm ring around her house like a force field. How he wanted to crash into its beauty and fuck it up. To fuck her up, in the sweetest way. How he wanted to ruin her for the best.

He hit the invisible clothesline in the cool night air that meant he was officially in her territory. The sweat collecting on the back of his neck no longer cooled him and damn her if it didn't feel so fucking good to suffer in her warmth. He needed her to know how mad he was that she wouldn't eat with him.

* * *

Bonnie bolted up from her bed. It was still dark outside. Something about the way Kai's magic passed by this morning jolted her. Breathing heavily, she crossed her bedroom to look out the window. He wasn't down on the street but she could still feel him lingering, feel his magic accosting her. It was as if imaginary hands were reaching inside of her, trying to pry her heart out of her chest like treasure from a dead woman's grip.

His magic wasn't passing. He had stopped.

Three decisive raps on the front door startled her. His knock sounded serious. She must be in trouble. Knowing she was safe inside her house, she figured she may as well open the door and let him get whatever out of his system. Avoiding him wouldn't accomplish anything.

She padded to the door, seeing the top of his brown hair through the window above it. Already she felt it, his disquiet fizzling into her. She'd hoped, futilely, that he was there to apologize. Checking that her lilac robe was covering her appropriately, she turned the knob and opened the door halfway.

His narrowed eyes found hers immediately. He was breathing through his teeth, allowing each intake to fill his body so that he appeared larger. A black cord hung over the back of his neck, dangling earbuds over his bare chest. An old instinct spiraled through Bonnie's insides and she bit her lip to keep her eyes straight.

 _Don't look down._

 _Don't look down._

"What?" she snipped.

"What did I do?" he demanded. And she didn't know what answer he expected from her. He continued, "What did I do to deserve the way you look at me, or the way you act around me?"

Bonnie tongued the inside of her cheek and inhaled deeply through her nose, taking note of all her senses to figure out whether this was actually happening, if he actually woke her up for _this_.

"Should I start from the beginning?" she asked sternly.

"Yeah."

"I don't have enough time in my life to recount all of the terrible things you've done. But it's a tired topic, isn't it? You know what you did."

He half rolled his eyes and cut himself short to blink disbelievingly at her, staggering his jaws so the hard bones showed prominently masculine, and angry.

"I can't undo what I've done. I can only do right now. And I'm trying. But you won't even give me the fucking time of day."

"You don't deserve it. You can't be forgiven."

"I don't want to be forgiven."

"You're a horrible person."

"Get over it," he growled. The guttural drop in his voice clawed through her skin, awakening something primal. It stirred within her, coating her heart in panic, rippling through her bones until she trembled. For the shortest fraction of a second, Bonnie took in the sight of him shirtless. It would've been easier to enjoy if his head was someone else's, but there he was, plain and inviting for her to see. She could never tell with the kind of T-shirts he wore but he was ripped. Vigorous breath moved his chest. His nipples were tight, bracing against the breeze. Her eyes followed the ravine between muscles down his belly to the point where small dark hairs teased at the top of the elastic waistband hugging his hips. Realizing she was still staring, she jerked her eyes up to see that he was watching her. A dark spark of satisfaction stood out in his pupils, but was not acknowledged by his eyebrows, still narrowed at her.

The sky began to blue with coming dawn. Bonnie felt the trees perking.

"The sun's coming up. You should go."

His eyes darted to her neck, reminding her that she was still open there. She'd tried to seal her skin with magic when she got home, and as a witch she found that she tended to heal a bit quicker than the average human, but Kai had a big mouth. His bites made a landscaping project of her neck, the puncture points jagged from passion and purple from depth. And as nasty as she knew it looked, it was a far cry from the damage he'd actually done.

"Wednesday," she stated, not in the mood for his bloodthirst. He removed his gaze from her neck to bore into her eyes, complacent.

"Don't bother," he said. "I don't want your gross blood anymore." And he vanished, leaving her to purse her lips undecided whether she was glad or severely wounded.


	10. Chapter 10

Wednesday came and Bonnie felt on edge all day. Each time she tried entertaining herself with magic, it came out weak in parts and too strong in others. She had gotten used to her weekly encounters with Kai, and now that she had nothing to look forward to or expect, her day felt useless. Since their last intense conversation, his magic hadn't even skimmed hers on jogs. She had the chance to sleep uninterrupted, yet her body conformed still to the clock he set her on and she found herself waking naturally to the ultramarine color of four thirty in the morning. Only there was no thrill to rise for.

She didn't get very far into the afternoon before she decided that she couldn't change her body's schedule. The trauma of the blood loss and the high of the following heal beckoned. She was addicted. She was going to Kai's house, and she was going to hold him to their arrangement. He probably didn't mean what he said anyway. He was the kind of person to lash out, to make brash statements he didn't mean if it served a temporary purpose. Bonnie imagined herself arriving at his doorstep, offering blood he couldn't resist and falling victim to that frenzied embrace yet again.

 _Strange._

Imagining his arms around her in that desperate way, she realized for certain that she didn't actually hate it. Her shameful fantasy convinced her. Next time it happened, maybe she wouldn't bar her arm between them. Maybe she would let the feed take over her just as well as him. Something akin to flattery swelled in her chest when she thought of how lost Kai got when he fed; how frantically he held onto her; how needed she was; how wanted she felt. Perhaps letting herself relish this didn't have to be far off from _enough_ , enough to justify giving him so much of herself.

His house swelled with malice.

Bonnie clopped up to his door in a carefully chosen set of heels. To hell with standards; she needed a little leg to apologize. And anyway, she wore grey jeans to balance out the impression of effort, tight as they were. She knew they rounded out her ass nicely so even they had a counteracting clothing item: a shapeless white sweater. And it didn't dip into a V or a shoulder-rider at any point. The sweater was deterrent at its purest.

"I told you not to come," he said when he found her anxious on the porch.

"I chose not to believe you."

"Ballsy," he simpered. He was barefoot in sweatpants and a black shirt that swanked his shoulders. His hair looked cared for but he was unshaven and Bonnie couldn't tell if he actually thought she wouldn't show up tonight. He assessed her for a cruel moment.

"So…are you going to let me in?" she prompted.

"Oh, did you want to come in this time? That might be a problem. I haven't cooked, the place is a sty, and also I'm a horrible person."

Bonnie sighed heavily and said, "I'm sorry I hurt your feeling."

"Thanks? Ouch again?"

"Are you hungry or not?"

Kai glanced again at the dry purple bite on her neck, the infected looking evidence from last week's feeding. She noticed a vein of thirst betray him. He backed into his house and walked away, leaving the door open for Bonnie to let herself in.

She followed him into the kitchen. He was pulling a frozen pizza out of his freezer and eyeing the instructions on the box. She noticed a cellphone sitting out on the island. "Is that a cellphone?" she asked, going to pick it up.

Kai laughed. "You're not the brightest crayon in the box, are you?"

She ignored this insult. "Why do you have one?"

"Do you not?" he asked, turning a dial on his oven.

"No one to call," she jabbed.

Bonnie clicked the backlight on to find that his lockscreen background was a picture of a celebrity in a red bikini. "Really?" she chided, holding up the phone.

He smirked. "The combination is 552444 if you want to go ahead and make yourself my only contact. Or do I need to ply you with liquor first?"

Bonnie suppressed a smile. She did still have her phone. Out of habit, she'd searched for it soon after landing in the prison world and found it at the Salvatore house. She was hanging on to it but hopelessly kept it in a box in her bedroom closet and rarely looked at it. She would never admit to having tried calling Jeremy and Caroline with it in times of need, to no answer.

"I haven't even looked at my phone in…forever," she said wistfully, trying not to reminisce.

He repeated, "552444."

Whether or not to give Kai her number took little debate. In the real world, an instant and solid No would suffice. Now, here, she had a choice but keeping her number to herself was dumb. She unlocked his phone and added herself to his contacts.

"Are you actually doing it?" he asked in shock. "Wow. I was expecting to be the last man on earth and still not deserve your number."

She offered him a self-loathing smile. She was glad that he was glad, but she hated that he had to rub her flimsy dignity in her face. "You can still ply me with liquor," she admitted, hoping that he would. He smiled at her, satisfied, and then prepared her a glass of gin on ice.

* * *

The pizza was finished and they sat with their plates on opposite sides of the island. Kai was not prepared to sit through another minute of false patience. He chomped off half of a pizza slice in one bite, chewed thoroughly while wiping his hands on his napkin, washed down the bite with a swig of iced gin and announced, "Let's get down to business, shall we? What do I have to do for some femoral?"

Bonnie grimaced and spat an ice cube from her mouth back into her glass. She hadn't been in the house for more than twenty minutes and it was already all about the blood. Kai knew she would hate it. He knew he should've waited for a better segue way to present itself. But she had an answer: "Die and go to heaven."

He considered this. "Check," he said.

"You're literally in hell."

"I will literally kneel before you." She raised a brow and he continued, "Seriously. I'll do anything." He suppressed a smirk, hoping that she too was now picturing him kneeling before her with his face buried in her thighs. The image alone stirred the boiling hunger for blood in him, among other things, and he had to bite the inside of his cheek.

Bonnie cut herself a bite of pizza with her fork, speared the bite and pointed at him when she said, "Try chopping off your dick so you can't make it weird. Then we'll talk."

Kai blended a sigh and laugh together. She said ' _Your dick_.' It was funny. "I told you that was involuntary."

"Same rules apply."

"Bonnie…" he groaned, readying himself to beg.

She threw her hands up. "French cigarettes. From France. Bring me those. And I'll think about it."

Kai found this resolution so amusing he could hardly contain himself. He clasped his hands together showed her an open mouthed grin. "You don't even smoke."

"I don't hang out with psychos either. Yet here we are."

This he found quite a bit less amusing. With just a minor shift in his posture as her warning, he reached across the island for her resting arm, grabbed hold and let the burn of a siphoning expend her. The wave of magic entered him through the soul and he breathed against the wonderful feeling. Bonnie's magic, despite her constant unease around him, was full of love. It was so kind and strong that even a monster like him couldn't hate it. Every time he took some from her, part of his consciousness drifted off to a distant time when he did feel loved, by his mother and his sister. Pressing his lips together, he watched Bonnie's eyelids flutter over eyeballs rolling back into her head from the pain, her teeth bared. This was wrong. He let go.

Bonnie ripped her hand free and let it boomerang swiftly across Kai's face. He was a vampire now and his body remained unaffected, but he wouldn't deny that if he were still human the slap might have knocked him out of his chair. Hiding how impressed he was behind a glare, he turned his reddened face up, debating whether to discipline her for this.

"You know I hate that," Bonnie snapped.

"You know I'm a sociopath, right?" he drawled.

"You know I'm your only friend, right?" she retorted harshly.

Kai's guard fell down in pleasant surprise. He was in just enough control of himself not to gush. However angry, Bonnie brushed the exchange off and continued eating her slice of pizza.

"We're friends?" he asked, needing to hear her confirm it for his own pleasure.

"Fuck," she said with her mouth full and rolled her eyes. "I miss eating dinner with people who aren't you."

"Wish I could say likewise." He shrugged, "You're the only dinner I've ever had."

She ignored this comment. "I miss restaurant food," she said, starting to sound frustrated.

"So walk into your favorite restaurant and use their shit," he suggested. It was kind of a no-brainer.

"Can't cook," she admitted.

"You can learn. You've got time." His thoughts drifted momentarily upward to the ascendant hiding neatly in the drawer next to his bed.

"I never thought I would say this," Bonnie started, "But I miss having a schedule. Somewhere to be. Something to do. Nothing I do matters here. Nothing is expected of me."

 _Not true_.

"I miss bad weather. Snow. The cold. Storm clouds, thunder, lightning and _rain_."

She said the word _rain_ like the name of someone she loved dearly and lost. He could see the emotion in her, crawling out of everything about her in that moment. In that moment, she couldn't hide. She went on listing the things she missed, and Kai wanted to feel bored but hearing her pour herself out to him, whether or not she meant to, caused unwarranted sympathy. _Pay attention_.

"Birds. All animals, honestly. Even the bad ones. I miss life, and congregation. God, I miss Caroline. If she was stuck here with us there would be a party every weekend."

 _Thank god we're alone._

"And I miss Elena."

The mention of Elena turned Kai's mood. All of this was his fault, but the fact that even in the real world Bonnie had things to suffer for, also because of his doing, kicked up an unfamiliarly strong cloud of guilt.

"I wonder what he told her," Bonnie mused. She had stopped touching her food. Most of her pizza still sat on her plate but it was clear that dinner was over.

"Probably goodbye," Kai answered.

"I bet his guilt eats him alive," she said hopefully.

 _Mine did_.

"I bet she doesn't even know, honestly."

"Elena?" Kai clarified.

"Who else?"

"You must be confused," he treaded carefully. "Elena's still asleep."

Bonnie tapered her eyes at him. "What?"

"The spell isn't broken."

She stared at him, dumbfounded.

"What, you thought just because you left her plane of existence she got to wake up? The point of my father putting me in the prison world was to punish me without killing me. You may be dead to the world, Bonnie, but you're not dead. Elena sleeps. I thought you knew that."


	11. Chapter 11

"Shit," she said.

Kai needed a healthy gulp of gin and took it.

"He must be pissed," Bonnie said, still incredulous.

Kai smiled. The idea of Damon being eternally pissed, thanks to him, was great. He never liked the way Damon talked to Bonnie in 1994. Even when he lacked compassion, he could still recognize when someone was being a dick, and Damon was a constant dick. It had been entertaining at first, and then it just got sad.

Bonnie's lips came together and her face began twitching. Kai knew that face.

"What are we gonna do?" she asked, her voice cracking higher.

 _Please don't cry, please don't cry, please don't cry._

"What we do," Kai answered, taking another bite of pizza. Maybe if he ignored the emotion it would stop.

"I have to get back," she declared breathily. It looked like the wetness in her eyes was subsiding as she pushed them away and nodded to herself determinedly.

Kai rolled his eyes. "Supposing you do, what for? To kill yourself so she can wake up? So you can watch Elena stretch and yawn while you take your last breath?"

"I don't know."

Her altruism was infuriating. Kai could feel the rage in him tingling to life. He was going to do something bad. "To spend your life running from Damon? You already know where he stands. He will kill you," he said, deepening his tone, hoping to get the seriousness through her head. He'd rattle it in if he needed to.

"Or you can lift the spell."

 _Calm down_. "Not possible. Because we aren't going back."

"How can you just give up so easily?"

"Simple," he snapped, taking up the bottle of gin and pouring himself a second glass. _That's it. Good_.

"There has to be something you miss," Bonnie urged.

He took a bite of pizza to mull that over while he chewed. He considered missing things, but they were pretty much all _things_. Everything he cared about was all here, already. Here, for Kai, felt better than the real world. Perhaps it was because he'd gotten so used to the quiet in 1994. When he finally did make it out, he was thrilled to have living, breathing flesh bags to maim and torture and wreak vengeance upon, but the joy was momentary. After all was said and done, he still hated people. A world with everything else but them was exactly what he preferred, and what he needed to stay on the track for redemption, temperance and mental rehabilitation. _If that_. He had done so much wrong that he wasn't sure if he even could be rehabilitated. He felt bad, now, for some of them, but it didn't change what happened. Even if he could go back in time, he couldn't change the way his family treated him and the atmosphere that inspired him to cause the damage he did, and it would still happen. Perhaps the one thing they did right was isolating him in a worldwide playground. It was better than hating himself, feeling the pressure to change himself, trying with no luck to fit the square he was into the circle he was expected to be.

"Sometimes I think I miss my sister," he finally said. "Say what you want, but she's my twin. That bond sticks. It's annoying. But oh, wait, killed her, so no, I don't miss anything."

"You're awful," Bonnie ejected. It was so easy for her to say these things to him. They waited on the tip of her tongue, they would not be swallowed in lieu of kinder words. He would never win.

"There you go, saying what you want," he said pleasantly. "Please continue. Just know that it's pointless. Nothing you can say will have the effect you're looking for because I've heard every old news insult there is for someone like me. My family made sure of it before you were even born." He took his last bite.

Following his request, Bonnie did continue. "Jackass," she stated with the upbeat kind of tone that was meant to display how much she didn't care whether he'd heard that one before or not. He continued chewing on his last bite, smiling on the outside while he watched her glare. The sadness was still in her eyes. Perhaps he'd let her soak up those tears waiting behind her eyelids with a little meanness. Acting out always helped him quell sadness, why would she be any different?

"Fucker," Bonnie said next.

He couldn't resist responding to that one. "Agreed, but not the kind I wanna be," he smirked. She slammed her fork down on the table and he knew he'd gotten to her. Still, he needed to add, "Not at the moment, anyway. I'm not a virgin or anything."

"You make me sick," she said.

"Heard it," he sighed.

"You're annoying."

"Heard that too, almost like a million times now."

"You're a terrible, horrible piece of shit. You're psychotic, and careless, and mean, and violent, and rude. I doubt you've ever had a real friend in your life because of how messed up you are. You, Malachai Parker, are a sick fuck."

"Uh, you already said 'sick' _and_ 'fuck.' Also, 'terrible' and 'horrible' both mean and sound the same, and you said them right next to each other. You're not very good at this."

Bonnie swiped her plate from the island onto the floor. The violence was very sudden, but now she was quaking. Kai sat back in his chair.

"That plate was _free_ ," he said as if it had been very expensive, pretending to be appalled at her destruction. In response to his mockery, she placed two gentle fingers at the top of the gin bottle and poked it on its loud side. Kai watched gin slosh out of the bottle with each lip-ward wave until it rolled over the edge and crashed to the same fate as her dinner plate. High on damage, Bonnie didn't stop there. He followed her with his eyes as she stood up and shoved her chair onto its side.

"Oh no, not the chair," Kai teased. So she clopped around the island in her heels and raised her arm to smack him again. He caught her by the wrist and held on, making sure to show her the little fires dancing in his eyes before he siphoned just a bit. In her frustration and combined pain, she cried out and he stopped absorbing her magic, but didn't let go. She began twisting her arm in his grip, hissing and panting, and he could hear her blood rushing back and forth in her body, and her heart clamoring for release. He licked the tip of an emerging fang, willing himself to stay calm.

Bonnie, with her free hand, clawed at his plate and slid it to the ground as well. Her untouched butter knife then magnetized to her fingers, which she tightened around the handle and used to jam its tip into his neck. It wasn't the first time she'd jammed a foreign object into his neck. She seemed to like doing that. Her defiance was so charming.

Not yet ready to free her wrist, he stood up to see this episode through. He wanted to play, too. He didn't understand where all of her rage was coming from, but that was something he could relate to.

Kai slid the butter knife out from his flesh, admired the look of his own blood on the silver, then hurled it stridently aside and turned his glower down to her. Her and her animosity. God she was beautiful. A familiar flash of something graced her features, but she didn't give in to it. In another jerk of her arm, she thrust her face forward toward his, letting him know that she was not afraid of him. His gums burned with fangs crying for liberation, to clamp, to tear, to puncture the girl huffing in front of him, daring him. Her skin was so…

All of a sudden, he let go.

The pulse in her secured wrist had begun to still and it occurred to him that he was hurting her, whether or not she let it show. The guilt in him ran thicker and he felt…bad, or something. Instead of appreciating her freed arm, Bonnie used it against him. She further vented her wrath in a ruthless shove into his shoulders. He let it sway him a step back. She closed the new distance with haste to shove him again, and he found himself against the wall. With no more distance to push him, she began slapping at his chest, working herself up into a fit until she couldn't seem to breathe anymore. Her hands remained on his shoulders, wringing the cloth of his shirt in her fists while she bored into his eyes with fury until the same deadness he stared back rinsed through her. She couldn't make the heat stay; it would kill her. He afforded himself one glance down at her pouting bottom lip which, to her apparent disgust, did not go unnoticed. She tugged him by her little holds on his shirt, only to slam him back against the wall once more for good measure. He mirrored her catching of breath and she, in turn, mirrored his bottom lip glance. Bonnie Bennett looked at his lips. So he risked it and looked at hers again. How full and lovely they were. Just when he wondered if things were about to get good, they quivered.

The water that she'd kept so expertly dammed behind her eyelids burst forth in a season of sobs. Her violent hands released his shirt and fell weakly to his chest, shaking with the melancholy wracking her body. Such a fast flip in emotional theme startled and confused Kai. He looked at the droplets rolling down Bonnie's scrunched face and didn't have a clue how to respond. Back in the good old days, he would have laughed and left. The simplicity of that tempted him now, but it seemed wrong. When he imagined doing it, he couldn't then imagine Bonnie reacting in any way other than anger, and then more gloom. Which was maddening because, in those days, he wouldn't have even gotten so far as imagining or caring what her reaction would be. He would laugh, leave and then that would be that, because Kai was all that mattered. But he was feeling for two now, instead of none.

The fact that this girl was positively falling apart in front of him and he didn't know what to do was more upsetting than missing that void. And it was embarrassing. And there was pressure. He felt it mostly in his chest, like a rock fell down from his head and landed on his heart. Bonnie withdrew her hands from his chest and that thrill of physical contact with her magic left him. They were each more alone than they needed to be in that moment. Suddenly he couldn't feel anything at all more strongly than the need to regain that contact, to touch her, to reach out with his _heavier than hell_ arm and grab her, or, _not grab_ , hold her, _not tight_ , gently. It was so hard. Comfort from her closeness faded as she took a step back, lifting her hands up to her spilling eyes, taking in harsh gasps and letting them back out too quickly in what sounded like painful laughter. He had only heard this kind of crying a few times in his life. It was a hopeless kind of crying.

"Bonnie," he said, feeling infected. Speaking was easier than moving.

 _Do something_.

At last he settled on something he knew: taking her wrists. Extra careful to keep his touch soft, he slid his fingers over her pulsing veins, between her hands and her wet face. She twitched slightly at his skin on hers, always a problem. He peeled her hands away from her face, revealing the shiny mess that was humanity. Her makeup was beginning to scatter down her bottom eyelids like sand in the tide. He could feel her surprise in her stiff arms, but she wouldn't turn her eyes up at him. She let him take her hands, still unsure what he was doing with them. He decided to place them back on his chest. It felt nice.

Giving in, she stepped back into him and bowed her head despondently. She looked so sad and helpless, he wanted to cradle her. He had never wanted to cradle anything in his life. Except maybe pie. But pie deserved to get back some of the love it inspired.

 _Love_.

 _Disgusting_.

Kai removed his hands from Bonnie's and hovered them over her shoulders. He wanted her to come closer but again wasn't sure what he was doing, or how to behave. But he didn't need to come up with anything. A rough new wave of sobs tore through Bonnie and she shifted uncomfortably into him. It was intentional, but clear that she wasn't proud of it. He wondered if she finally understood that he was all she had. Her head dug into the bone on his chest, and something clicked in him. _Hug_. And he descended his arms upon her, around her back, flattening his cold hands against the white wool that covered her ribs, his fingers feeling very prominently each bone beneath and each beat of enlivening blood in her body. Bonnie. He could feel her.

In reaction to his arms around her, because she was starved for this, this kind of thing, this kind of touch, this compassion- she yanked her hands off his chest and wrapped them fervently around him. He felt her elbows clench at his sides and her fingers soak in the empathy on his back. He felt her chest against his, practically thrusting her heart at him, all in. Tears coming faster freely soaked through his shirt, making him cold and so, so warm. Shakily he slid his hands up her back, over neck and into her soft hair. He wanted to stroke her in a soothing way but figured it was too soon for that. He wasn't ready to be _that_ sweet. Holding the back of her head to him was plenty.

They hugged this way for a while. Neither made a move for better or worse. Until the beat of her heart ebbed into his brain and resounded in his ears, making the continuation of this bizarre hug impossible. He wanted. He needed. Just thinking of how much he wished he could suppress the hunger made his fangs come right out.

"I'm about to ruin this," he whispered between the pesky teeth.

She sighed into him. Wiping her face on the front of his shirt, she lifted her head, sniffing back the remaining wetness in her face. She slipped her fingers underneath the neckhole of her sweater and tugged it down over her left shoulder, showing him a bare, bronze shoulder that begged to be bitten. Her cooperation relieved him. He traced an approving finger over her black bra strap before clawing it loose from her shoulder and dipping. After the atmospheric shift that happened because of a hug, he felt more welcome in the desire with which he pressed his lips to her thudding neck. To savor, this time, he nipped a bit of her flesh between his flat teeth and sucked on the skin. Letting his tongue circle slowly over this catch, he tasted the many salts of her tears, her cells, her lotion again. The pace and depth of her breath changed. He assigned blame to fear.

Her blood flowed hot and evenly into his mouth. As he sucked, it seemed to fill him just as desperately as he thirsted, as if her blood wanted to be in him and not her. Sweet relief calmed his nerves. He began feed-dreaming of an alternate universe in which he and Bonnie could both be vampire witches; the bloodsharing would be amazing. She squirmed in his arms and he snapped out of his fantasy to realize that his fingertips were dragging her sweater further down her frame, stretching it into quiet little rips as it went, and she was falling limp.

 _Damn it_.

Kai released her neck and held her up against him. Her head lolled on his chest. He nipped his wrist, angled her head and smashed his gaping wound on her mouth. He smeared his blood over her lips, letting it drip between her teeth. Luckily it found her responsive. Curving her lips into a kiss, she attached her mouth to the wound. He felt her teeth budge his veins and her tongue solicit the flow of his blood. She was a cat and he was her bowl of milk.

It wasn't like the first time. The first time, she was closer to death and had no energy to respond with. This time, she knew perfectly well what was happening and what she was doing. He knew feeding from himself was rumored to feel good, but he wasn't prepared for this level of good. Feeling her suck at his essence the way he had at hers was…ecstasy. He found himself incapable of withholding the moan that slithered out of his bloodied lips. Immediately he hated himself, bracing for Bonnie to shove him away and leave that instant. But she didn't. On the contrary, she seemed to be enjoying his blood just as much as he enjoyed losing it.

To test the awesomeness, he brought his wrist closer to him. He wanted to see if he could reel her in with it, and he could. She remained latched, and rested her head on his chest for support. In amazement he watched the blue and red bites on either side of her neck close and reform to cloud-soft, unscathed skin. A small sound of relief vibrated into his wound, causing a sharp intake of breath on his part. It all felt too good. He wanted this to go on forever, except maybe without clothes. Thinking downward, he noticed that his lower half was already trying to get out. He remembered what she said. _Don't touch me with it_. He most certainly was going to touch her with it if she didn't stop licking him. Respectfully, but not without agitation, he took a step back from her and led her outward with his wrist. Her mouth left him and she licked her lips, lowering her eyes in sudden shame and wiping her mouth with the sleeve of her sweater.

He saw her to the door. He didn't want her to go, but she clearly needed a minute and he wasn't about to embarrass himself with touchy-feely crap. Blood stained the front of her white sweater. He really liked the look of it.

"I should walk you home," he said, noting the pallid tinge to her face.

"To protect me from what, the big bad wolf?" she said.

"More like bad manners. Or potholes."

"I'll be fine."

He shrugged. "You're right. The big bad wolf never walked Little Red Riding Hood to her grandmother's house. He was already there waiting for her."

The last facial expression she offered him was the wide-eyed warning that he'd better not be on her porch when she arrived home. Against all impulses firing up everywhere inside him, he listened. Or he planned to, anyway.


	12. Chapter 12

Clove scented candles lit in her own home bathed Bonnie in comfort. The moon poured through her open bedroom window with the breeze. She lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, needing a few moments of waking calm before letting sleep take her. Again, Kai had taken her to Hell and back. At least it ended well this time. There was just one little detail of her evening with him that she couldn't get out of her mind. It weighed on her like the back rub, and the subsequent inability not to touch herself.

His tongue.

His tongue and how he used it on her neck. It took her breath away. Nevermind Elena _still_ being under his curse; that was a matter for worrying about tomorrow. Now, in the immediate problem of Bonnie's own reality, _Kai's tongue_. Even more problematic, the unexpected and painfully instant submission she had committed. He apparently hadn't noticed when it happened, but it had. It had, and that mattered to Bonnie. That terrified her. Because if he knew the meaning of her breaths, he could have taken her however he wanted. He could've gotten that femoral artery he so craved. And horribly more.

Bonnie shivered and turned, pulling her knees up to her chest underneath her quilt. She glanced to her cellphone sitting on her pillow, umbilical to the outlet on the wall. The minute she got home, she rummaged through her closet to dig it out. She hoped it was just the nostalgia for having it, for possessing the constant possibility of being reached by someone, whoever they were. And now after all these hopeless months, there was her phone, impregnated by a small amount of optimism she wouldn't have had if not for Kai. She could no longer ignore the nagging probability that he _was_ different from before. As similar as he seemed, as much as she felt like he was hiding something from her, she found it harder to hate him.

 _Probably the loneliness making you ill_ , she thought to herself. Her heart ached for what her Grams might think of her now, because this night was a new step in the wrong direction. Not only did she feed Kai, but she fed _from_ him, willingly. And liked it. She shivered again in remembrance of the intensity with which she liked it. Kai's blood pooling like velvet, _red velvet_ , in the crater of her tongue widening to collect as much of him as she could, gliding hot down her throat. What had she become? A vampire herself, of sorts.

For a fleeting second, Bonnie considered getting out of bed, changing from her sleep clothes into a new, not so bloody outfit and going back to him. For what, she couldn't say. Another hug, perhaps. To lean on someone. To feel her heart crack open. Or even to bicker some more. She only knew that she missed the excitement of being near him, of not knowing what he'd do, of _hoping_ what he would do and being bitterly disappointed, sorely surprised or wondrously satisfied. She just never knew with him, and something in that enticed her. This recent development of liking him was in a way different from liking friends. Her brain insisted to her soul it was not a crush. It couldn't be possible, not with who she was and who he was, all the trite names she had called him that night. How indifferently he accepted her abuse was further proof of his true nature. Crushing on Kai would make her someone else entirely, an invalidating fact.

Maybe she just needed to have sex with him. What she was sick with didn't need to be a feeling so much as her human nature taking its periodic turn for the carnal.

The familiar ping of her notification ringtone buzzed out of her cellphone. The sound alone released a slew of endorphins and she smiled wider than she had her whole time in this prison world. She swiped up the phone and unlocked it, eager to find out what news it bore.

A new number was texting her.

Forgoing all nonsense, Bonnie added the number to her contacts as Kai. Checking the time, she noted that it had been a fair amount of hours since she left his house. He wasn't clingy.

His text said: **Hey**

She responded: **Hi**

She waited a long time for him to text back. It actually frustrated her.

Finally, he texted: **What are you doing?**

Bonnie: **Texting you**

Kai: **What else?**

Bonnie: **Trying to sleep**

Kai: **Goodnight.**

Apparently her time alone took away her text etiquette. She didn't want him to stop talking to her, but being blatant and rude would do that. She needed to amend it.

Bonnie: **Trying and failing.** **Wide awake. What are you doing?**

She waited another frustrating amount of time to hear back from him.

Kai: **Watching the craft**

Bonnie: **lol why?**

Kai: **But are you really laughing out loud?**

Bonnie: **No. Smiling though.**

Kai: **lol why**

Bonnie: **shut up**

Kai: **what are you wearing?**

Bonnie's heart jumped up. An undeniable blush heated up her cheeks. She received another text from him, an instant follow-up that read: **joke.** And then another right after that: **calm down**

She took five minutes to decide on her response before she spited him: **T shirt and panties**.

Kai: **I'm dead.**

Bonnie: **Finally.**

Kai: **Do you feel better?**

Bonnie: **yes**

Her candle flame died down and the room fell dark. She wished he would ask her if she wanted to come back over. She wouldn't invite herself and she knew better than to invite him to her. More than anything else, Bonnie wished Caroline or Elena or even Matt could be texted too; she missed all of them and she needed to talk to someone who wasn't Kai, partly so she could talk _about_ Kai.

Kai: **Good. See you next week.**

Feeling utterly let down by the shortness of the conversation, Bonnie wilted.

Bonnie: **Night**.

She set her phone gingerly on the pillow beside hers and laid her head, facing it. Hate for herself brimmed within her. She couldn't allow herself to like him, or to hope for another text, or to plan on sleeping with him to get anything out of her system. It was unacceptable. The first plan of action was to wake up at a decent hour, steal a car and search for the ascendant. There had to be one, and she had an idea of where it might be hiding. No way was she going to idle in this prison world while her best friend was missing her life. She had to get back.

Her phone interrupted her thoughts. Willing herself to pick it up calmly and without the enthusiasm she had to water down, she read his last text and wanted to die.

Kai: **Sweet dreams, Bonster ;)**

* * *

He set his hands lightly on the wood of her door, letting his nails beg the paint. He wanted to claw his entry into her home. Her porchlight was on as if she expected guests; he knew she didn't. He wished she wouldn't leave it on. It invited him, but when he drew to it he was spotlit and unwelcome. He didn't want to be seen. He only wanted to stand there in the threshold of her energy and house, and to pine without hope. To ache for her touch again, the crumbling of her will incarnated by her arms squeezed around him. He fantasized lightly that he had the gall to stand there uncloaked, that she would feel him and attend, leave the illusion of her safety and just hug him. Just one more time.

This wasn't the first time he'd stood dumbly at her door for no reason. He didn't do it every night or anything, but probably more than a normal person should. _Do normal people do this?_ It was just so hard to find peace when she left him. Every time she left him wracked with hunger of a different kind, and standing around on her porch without her knowledge gave him a barely sufficient satiation.

He felt his phone buzz in his pocket, and he took only one hand off of her door to read the text.

Bonnie: **Night.**

One word. It was so clipped. So detached. Was she trying to shake him clean off or was she just tired? He knew it was the end of the conversation; he initiated it himself. But did she need to be so cold?

This night was different. He felt the desire to knock so strong. He didn't know what he would say. Options swarmed, for there were thousands of things he wanted to say.

 _Hug me._

 _Let me in._

 _I'm still hungry._

 _I have to fuck you._

None were suitable. Nothing he could say, having arrived unannounced in the middle of the night, would merit the kind of reaction he craved from her. She would not hug him at random, or invite him in, or feed him again, or least of all condescend to let a monster of a person like him ravage her. And why should she?

Among the things he wanted to say, the truth burned him the most. But he swore to himself at the beginning of all of this that he wouldn't tell. There was no point. And there was certainly no way she would ever, _ever_ forgive him if she knew.

It just seemed so… _wrong_ , not telling. Given all the horrors he'd put her through and all the ones he would inevitably put her through over their eternity together (he was, after all, kind of a headcase) she deserved to know the truth.

What a rotten truth it was. She would stop talking to him for a year at least. Unfriend him for three. Cut him off her blood supply for four, maybe five. That would suck. But she did technically have forever to get over it, and eventually she would have to. Maybe it was worth it. Maybe he would keep it to himself for as long as he could stand it, until he was absolutely dripping with shame and deceit, before he told. The right moment would, in time and its vastness, arrive.

Meanwhile, he needed to be good. For all the times he lost control, he needed to compensate in painfully decent behavior when he could.

He realized he'd been staring at Bonnie's text the whole time he thought. The blue light of his phone screen was giving him a headache. Leaving the one hand to feel up her door until the very last second, he texted: **Sweet dreams, Bonster ;)**

He smiled lightly, put his phone back in his pocket and lowered his hand, letting his fingers skim a last bit of magic on their way down to his side. Looking woefully at her door as if with overwhelming sentiment he could see through it, he backed away. There was nothing left to do with his remaining moonlight hours but wander back into the night. Time was all his, no plans and no restrictions but dawn. Maybe he would get lost in the trees and break some. Or find a men's clothing store and get something suitable for his next dinner with Bonnie. Or just go trash some stuff.

Five minutes later he found himself trudging into his own house again. Nothing sounded more interesting than being horizontal in his bed. Something warm in his core commanded it. It had been a revelatory night for him, what with Bonnie being a sap and hugging him and making him feel all oozy and weird.

He fell in his bed, kicking his Converse off and letting them just fall. He breathed in the emptiness of his room, wishing the void would come back. Having feelings was like trying to see in the dark. Not that seeing in the dark was actually a problem for his vampire eyes. Still, feeling nothing was a cake walk.

 _Cake._

His stomach broiled.

 _Blood._

His fangs inched down and his face tickled like those damned veins were branching out. Had it not been three measly hours since his last taste of blood? Maybe Bonnie took too much out of him in the heal.

 _Bonnie._

"Fuck," he whispered.

 _Sex._

God he missed it. It hadn't been horribly long, considering the time he was trapped in 1994. He filled his quota when he broke out of there, got one good fuck in because it was oddly enough, with all the other pressing, murderous matters at hand. Other than that, he couldn't remember the last time he helped himself.

The memory of Bonnie's form between his arms descended upon him. Her ribs, her waist, those hips…her breasts pressed against his chest when she hugged him tightly to her as if she liked him or something. Her body was truly antagonizing.

Kai liked women. People in general made him want to regurgitate but _women sometimes_ … The need to lay his seed lingered from being human, but in a more intense kind of way. It didn't make sense to him. Though he was a hybrid, he suspected he would still fall in line with typical vampirism and lack the ability to procreate sexually. So why the horniness? What was the purpose for that?

What a fucking bonus it was, though. If he ever did find himself out of this world, he could fuck and fuck and fuck as needed without a second to waste worrying about fathering his own pair of Gemini twins with upgraded problems. Briefly he wondered, without reason, if Bonnie's frame would be able to support that.

Shamelessly he moved his hand down his belly, beneath the lip of his pants. He gripped his shaft and sighed to find that it was hard and ready for action. To both his and its dismay, his hand would have to do. He closed his eyes, trying to focus on the quiet, on darkness and the nothingness inside him.

Bonnie crashed in, naturally. Just like he knew she would, no matter how much he tried to preserve himself. But to hell with control. He closed his eyes and let her in, and mimicked with his hand the thought of her soft sex enveloping his. And he made it last. He savored the fantasy for ten minutes at least, coloring in every corner, sure to imagine her true-to-life shudders as much as her moans, his bothersome bloodthirst as much as the kiss he wanted to plant on the swell of her breast before biting it. Finally, having lost his breath and his mind some time ago, he panted hard exhales to the pulsing of warm spunk in his palm.

He groaned at the mess he had made. Bonnie did this to him.


	13. Chapter 13

The car wouldn't start.

Of course. The sleek, perfect, brand new car Bonnie stole waited until she was in the middle of nowhere to stop working. She turned with enraged force the key in the ignition and the only sound she heard was her phone ringing out in the tall wheat a ways out from the dirt lot she was parked in. She had thrown it because he wouldn't stop calling.

Bonnie was gone for three days, she hadn't missed anything, hadn't done anything drastic, was only on a standard one-woman road trip in a world where the chances of being harmed by something other than herself were slim, and Kai was apparently going crazy.

His texts evolved in this way:

Kai, Thursday 11:46 AM: **Do you like cilantro? I'm thinking Mexican next week.**

Kai, Thursday 1:28 PM: **Bonnie.**

Kai, Thursday 2:28 PM: **Bonnie.**

Kai, Thursday 4:28 PM: **…Bonnie.**

Kai, Thursday 7:28 PM: **Whatever.**

Kai, Friday 9:30 AM: **But seriously.**

Kai, Friday 10:12 PM: **Where are you? I can't feel you.**

Kai, Friday 11:59 PM: **Fuck you too.**

By the seventh "missed" call, Bonnie was convinced that his desperation to reach her was the shining cherry flag on top of a red flag sundae, and at that ridiculous point there was no going back. She had to find the ascendant and get home, without him. The next sound step was letting go of him, via ditching her phone.

It was all well and good and a functional plan to stay on the hunt and on the move so Kai wouldn't catch up…until the car decided to bail on her. It wouldn't have been that big of a problem if there were other cars around, but there weren't any, and she was a ways out of town.

Over the last couple of days, Bonnie had driven to Whitmore and searched every logical location for the ascendant. Liv's dorm room, Jo's apartment, Ric's apartment, the hotel where Gemini wedding guests may or may not have stayed, but all searches turned up nothing. It was already difficult justifying how all of these locations were logical because, as far as everyone understood, Kai was trapped in 1903 and not a problem. Whoever had an ascendant prepared for the off chance he'd turn up was a dedicated paranoid, and a genius. A powerful one, who Bonnie could only guess the whereabouts of on that day.

The negative inner monologue Bonnie had developed after months alone in 1994 was no help either. It kept reminding her that Kai had already searched for the ascendant. He knew his coven eons better than she did and if he couldn't find it, she was flattering herself to think that she could.

It was already evening by the time she pulled up to the last location on her list: the wedding barn. And by the lack of cars parked in the dirt lot outside, she guessed taking a single step further was futile. But she'd driven all that way, so she motivated herself with a _why not?_ attitude and plowed ahead as planned. If she'd been smart about it and just left when instinct suggested, she wouldn't have used the rest of her daylight hours hollowing cabinets, gutting bridal suite closets and turning over rustic chests to no damned avail, all the while bracing herself for a panicky mouse or an unsuspecting spider to skitter from the commotion, knowing all too well that her apprehension was useless. There probably weren't even microscopic creatures. She was _that_ alone. And she felt it. She felt her own hopelessness like a weight chained to her leg by the time she was dragging it out to the car in the dark. When it wouldn't start, she cried.

Too done to walk to the next place, she settled to seek what domestic comfort she could in the barn. _Stay strong_ , she reminded herself. She ambled to the wine racks, selected a Moscato, dropped her ass in a chair, poured a healthy glass, toasted herself, drank and waited for morning.

She thought it arrived when a flash of light crossed her eyelids and she fluttered them open. It was still dark. She'd drunk herself to sleep before she ever found a bed. Her wrecked body was folded over on the wooden floor next to the table she was earlier sitting at like a civilized woman. She rubbed her eyes and rolled onto her back, feeling the alcohol stiff in her muscles. The boards on the ceiling were dark blue and lightening just barely. It was that four thirty shade she knew so well.

She took a deep breath. It was husky with phlegm from the joint she'd indulged in during her wine session. She recounted the events before that. The emptiness in the beautiful sunset falling over the barn; emotion had claimed her like the alcohol. She didn't really want to leave her phone in a field; she resolved to search for it when the sun rose.

As if attuned to her thoughts, she heard it ring. But the sound wasn't distant, like a cellphone hurled passionately into a wheat field should sound. It was tinny and clattering and so very near. She lifted her head and turned toward the direction of the sound, and screamed.

Kai was kneeling at her side.

Bonnie scrambled to her feet and dizzily backed away. The newer memories she'd made with him swirled up in her brain, telling her not to panic, and she wanted to let them convince her. But the remnants of his horror, like always, overtook. His poker face aided in the unease. He had a way of smiling at her; she didn't know whether he was glad he found her or ready to quit playing with his food and just kill her already. She realized too that they were standing in the last place they'd been together in the real world, and that memory was a bad one. She couldn't look at him without seeing the blood streaks on his face and staining brightly on his tux. She couldn't look past the uninvited guest who rocked her world to damnation.

In his left hand, he held his phone up to his ear and in his outstretched right hand, her phone, blaring, screaming for her.

So it wasn't a good-news poker face.

"It's for you," he said.

Twitching, she took her phone from his hand, half expecting him to drop it and grab her instead. But he didn't. Into his own phone, he falsely pleaded, "Come on, pick up, pick up, pick up."

 _Fine_ , she thought, _I'll play_. And she swiped the green telephone on her screen.

"Hello?" she dulled, boring into his eyes. He returned the tone.

"Hey, Bonnie. It's me, Kai."

"Hi, Kai. What's up?" She hated him so much.

"Oh, nothing. I'm just…wondering where the _fuck you are_!" he barked.

" _Calm down_!" she barked back, remembering that she was done bowing down to him, especially when he got carried away with anger. In response, he launched his phone into the wall behind her. The throw was so forceful the phone broke clean through the wall and clattered somewhere in the other room.

He went to the table and picked up her meager runaway bag, dumping its contents out and filtering through them. "Booze shooters, _nice_ , Bon. Votive candles. Pot…really? Map. Granola bars, damn it. Were you going on a bender or planning to leave me for good?"

"The ascendant's not in there."

"Trust me, I know," he said. "Because there isn't one. I told you that."

"But I _don't_ trust you."

"If you wanna go back so bad, why didn't you look for the ascendant months ago? Why'd you have to wait until we…"

"Until we what?"

"I thought we were getting along."

"I'm sorry, Kai. I just… _can't live_ knowing that my best friend is suffering."

"We're all suffering."

"I need to go back. I need to find a way."

"And kill yourself."

"No."

"That's what it takes. And fuck _everybody_ over there who thinks you're noble, because you're worth too much to keep dying for them."

Coming from somebody like him, the compliment was crushing. Hot tears formed in her eyes and gushed down. She didn't have the energy to wipe them. She hated the feeling in her that he wasn't wrong. She didn't care how noble it was or wasn't to die for the people she loved, and she didn't blame any of them for how much she loved them. But she wondered, in a small dark corner of herself, if any of them would die for her. If any of them would exhaust themselves unrelentingly for her sake. She couldn't expect them to; they were all great people meant to go on and do great things, and when she thought of her own future she often drew a blank. Ensuring everyone else's happiness most fulfilled her. Sharing a world with Kai, however, had taught her to take a little more for herself and she dared to think maybe her friends didn't put as much effort into her happiness as she did theirs. Maybe she deserved better than that.

She didn't want to taint her memory of them by thinking about it any further.

"Stop crying," Kai told her. "Come on. Snap out of it. You're killing me with this."

Bonnie turned her back to him. There were long lace drapes over the tall window on the wall. The sun rising was turning them yellow.

"You want me to give up," she muttered. "But it's not me."

"Well, make it the new you. Because whether you like it or fucking hate it doesn't matter. You're stuck with me. Sorry I'm not worthy of your eternity. Sorry I'm not Jeremy." Jeremy's name out loud cut Bonnie. " _Well_ ," Kai beat, "Sorry, not sorry. Jer-bear looks good and all, but come on. This." He motioned to himself with a conceited smirk.

"You're right," Bonnie agreed. His eyebrows rose. "It's useless." She tried to ignore how he drooped quite visibly when he realized it wasn't his statement that she was agreeing to. "And anyway," she continued, "I probably won't last long here. If the pure fucking misery of being stuck here with you doesn't kill me, _you will_. However it happens, eventually, I will die. And Elena will wake up."

Kai frowned down at his shoes. He seemed to be holding back another of his terrible thoughts. Bonnie walked to the window and fingered the curtains apart just an inch. She wanted to look out on the gold wheat outside, check the sun's progress.

"You're talented, you know." She felt her voice reverberate against the glass. She could see his reflection, see him perk up to the compliment, ready for her to expand on it. "It's a great spell," she continued. "Well thought out. No loopholes. Truly, I'm impressed. You really know how to ruin a girl's life."

He turned his head down again. So shaming him worked. Maybe over time she could train him like a dog.

"Do you need a ride home," he asked without tone. It was almost a whisper. Even in his voice, the poker effect discomforted her. Was he offering her the ride because he felt bad, or because he needed an opportunity to hurt someone to make himself feel better?

"I did," she admitted. With the loud whip of much fabric, she ripped the curtains apart, exposing the entire window. The rising sun's light cast into the room, leaving no shadow but that of Bonnie and her arms wide open across the window. She heard Kai yell, heard the sizzling of his flesh, his whooshing retreat into the safety of darkness in the hall. "Not anymore," Bonnie concluded.

She walked to her splayed bag and began putting her things back in.

"You fight so dirty," Kai scolded from his hiding spot. He sounded frustrated, and mildly awestruck. "Where are you going now?" he asked.

"It's daytime," she stated. "I can see where I'm going and I am no longer drunk, so I'm walking home." Then she remembered Kai drove there to find her. She slung her bag over her shoulder and looked at him. "Or I'm stealing your car." She held out an open hand. "Keys. Gimme."

They stared each other down, her hand waiting and his eyes dark while the last of his skin healed from ash to its normal color.

"Don't leave me alone," he whined. "I hate being here."

"It's called guilt. You should hang on to that feeling. It makes you just a little bit redeemable."

"Bonnie, please."

Not caring for the puppy desperation gleaming in his eyes, she made an impatient motion with her hand. He sighed, fished the keys out of his pocket and tossed them onto the floor behind her. She gave him an incredulous glower before turning to bend over and pick them up. She felt his eyes travel over her ass and quickly stood upright.

She made to leave without saying another word, but something occurred to her and she turned to say one last thing to him. A little something to let him know she didn't completely hate him.

"When you ruined the daylight ring that I made for Elena, Jo made her a new one."

He seemed disinterested. "And?"

"It's no Bennett exclusive. You can figure it out. But if you suck that much, maybe I can teach you. …Just not today."

A loud laugh burst out of Kai and dissipated into small giggles as he said, "I'm like super fucking powerful, how has it not occurred to you that I lied and am perfectly capable of making myself one of those stupid little rings?"

She faltered. "Why haven't you?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "Don't feel like it. I want you to do it for me."

"Because?"

"Because the idea tickles me."

Bonnie wanted to laugh at his word choice but wasn't sure of her emotional footing in this conversation. "It _tickles_ you?"

He shrugged again in response, eating up her annoyance.

"You're so weird." She started feeling exasperated and ready to leave.

"You're weirder," he bantered thoughtlessly.

"You're weird _est_ ," Bonnie shot back with little time to consider how dumb of a comeback that was. She was now eight years old. Kai seemed to think it was funny. Seeing the genuine curve to his lips brought one to hers, as hard as she tried to fight it. It wasn't a smile, but it wanted to be.

"Before you go," he started. She groaned. "While we're on the subject, I need your witchy opinion. Do you think this ring can be spelled?"

Kai leaned casually against the wall, holding up the backside of his left hand.

"I'm sure you can make it work," she said.

He protested, "Well this one was passed down in my family." He turned his attention down to the ring. It has other magic in it, if you can see the markings on it… Do you think it will affect the other spell?"

Bonnie squinted but couldn't see anything through the obscuring shadows. She took a few steps closer.

"Look," Kai said, holding his hand closer to the edge of darkness. Intrigued by the idea of old magic and getting a peek at another coven's heirloom, she went to him and took his cold hand. The ring he wore was a plain black band but she couldn't see any discernable markings.

"I don't see anything," she said, really zooming in before turning her enlarged pupils up at Kai. He was looking down at her, seeming to be very pleased with himself.

"That's probably because it's from a quarter machine," he whispered.

His hand in hers slipped free so he could clutch both of her shoulders.

The loss of control was immediate. Her body bowed to the pain of this deepest-reaching drainage and her knees gave way. His other hand was there to catch her at the waist. Everything good inside her, momentarily, disappeared. All sensation curled in against the onslaught of Kai's magic scouring her. She willed herself not to scream, and to implement resilience against these episodes of his, these clips and chips at her magic. This time she knew that he would never stop siphoning; he didn't care that she didn't like it. It was a way of life. It would remain as such until it killed her.

The window Bonnie had just exposed burst into a million shards of glass that danced the wood floor as gust of wind had its way. All other loose things around them picked up and moved at the wind's insistence. Papers made their own tornado; the lace curtains turned to beautiful billowing ghosts; Bonnie's short hair feathered over her tightened face and she looked pleadingly at Kai whose eyes were closed in concentration. He wasn't just taking. He was using.

The wind roared stronger yet and Bonnie, unable to root herself or breathe, stumbled in its current. She bumped into Kai and the two witches collided with a wall. The chairs at the table fell over and slid across the floor. Scared now of the demonic gust, despite its cause, Bonnie held onto Kai for dear life, assuring her dignity that she would slap him senseless when he finished this tantrum.

Just as easily as it started, it stopped. Kai let go of her and panted against the wall, his eyes still closed and mouth open in savor of the power. Objects settled and the curtains died back down to their limp selves moping against the wall. Before she let anything else happen, Bonnie gave Kai the ferocious slap she envisioned.

" _What the hell is wrong with you_?!" she shrieked.

He tightened his jaw and snarled a Kai-typical threatening retort, "Not that it hurts or anything, but I wouldn't do that again if I were you."

"I get it. You're dangerous."

Catching her breath, she stepped over debris and away, away toward the sunlight where he couldn't reach her again. But it was gone.

The wind he pulled from the sky brought clouds with it, like a weather vacuum. Outside the window, only grey swirled above. It was no longer a sunny day in hell, but an overcast one.

Acquiescent to distraction, Bonnie rushed to lean out of the window frame. Careful not to press her palms in the jagged glass still jutting off the wood, she craned her neck to stare up at the sky in amazement. She knew she should feel terrified, and she shouldn't be in awe but in escape mode. It had just been so long since she saw storm clouds. And these swelled with promise. _Would it_...?

A flash of light blinded her wide eyes. Thunder then cracked its presence and bowled around the sky, its greatness something inspiring and Bonnie felt like she might hyperventilate. Then came the whispering from above, trailing down. The first droplet landed on her cheek like a kiss. Thousands of its brothers came tumbling after. _Rain_.

Still too shocked to display emotion, Bonnie jumped out the window hole and let her boots fall heavy over the dirt as she stocked her way into the falling water, wanting to stand where it would wet her the most, where for the first time in too long she could feel close to nature, feel it reaching back and touching her like she so often touched it to no answer. The droplets fell heavier, and heavier, and she tilted her face up to them, needing them to bathe her, drown her, wash her of all pain. She never realized until then how much standing in the rain could feel like a conversation with god, whoever or whatever god was. It was transcendental.

She almost forgot about Kai. Remembering him and how they got there, she turned and he was standing in the window watching her. He wasn't smiling, or proud of himself in any way. In fact, the grey light on him almost made him look somber. He seemed to be lost in thought while he watched her, and it appeared he didn't like what he was thinking.

"Kai," she croaked in astonishment. He was twenty feet away, but he raised an eyebrow at his name on her lips, breaking through his drowse. He stepped over the low wall beneath what used to be the window to go to her.

"It's raining," she murmured the obvious. He nodded. She felt her excited heart pound, the pressure of her blood teasing spasms in her lungs tugging big air through her nose and all of these things moving her chest and she knew she might smile soon. "You can do that?" she asked.

He shook his head, "Not alone." He put his hands on his hips and looked up. Bonnie watched the rain adopt and drip over and wash him like it had her. Just as feeling it on herself had felt close to god, seeing it on him made him look just as close. Not redeemed, or forgiven, but simply accepted by nature. Coddled in all his flaws by nature's dripping arms. She knew these were dangerously tolerant thoughts. At the same time, they gave her the kind of comfort no amount of money could ever buy. It convinced that happiness was possible there, even with Kai. She was feeling it already. And she didn't know how long it would stay in her, or how long the rain would grace them. But she knew better than to waste that time.

Like the water rushing over Kai, Bonnie reached her hand out to him and tentatively placed it on his jaw. He glared skeptically, and his stubble poked the fleshy pad of her palm, but she didn't take her hand back or avert her eyes.

"I'm sorry," she broke. "I'm sorry I left. I didn't mean to hurt you." The way he tilted his face down and his eyes peered up into hers with new interest struck Bonnie as endearing. He was listening. It warranted an apology of another kind, something she wanted to say in 1994. Even after he had drugged, kidnapped and stuffed her in the trunk of his car just to cook her Thanksgiving dinner, the details he shared from his childhood were enough, momentarily, to make her feel sorry. Lately in particular, she found herself wondering what kind of man he could've been if his coven had instead nurtured his siphoning ability, rather than shame it. She wanted to tell him this one thing that he needed to hear. She doubted anyone had ever said it to him. "And I'm sorry your family didn't think you were good enough." A shadow crossed his features. "You are," she concluded, lifting her eyes up to the weather in reference.

She quieted the warring, stubborn part of herself demanding that he and anyone else who ever wronged her say their eternal apologies before earning one from her. She quieted it and put it away. Whatever he did was done, and like rain could be diluted in a thousand new, better doings if she let them. Maybe he would do the same with her wrongs.

Water collected on his lips, as on hers. She realized her hand was still on his face and let it fall, slightly embarrassed by the cheesy way she was acting. Instead of waiting for him to respond, she turned and tipped her face back up for another taste of rain. Then Kai spoke.

"Don't make me a daylight ring until you want to," he said. "The world's half yours, but…I don't want to leave your town, or you." He hesitated, for once not totally prepared to splurge everything on his mind, before he said, "I've been thinking maybe the daylight can be your half and moonlight can be mine, and it's your choice whether you invite me over to your half or not."

Bonnie could no longer suppress her smile. She hoped talking would cut it off. "Let's go home."

* * *

When she sat in the passenger seat of his coupe, she apologized for getting the seat wet. Her clothes were sopping, but so were his, and he didn't care. The windshield was foggy and with two wet witches in the small space, the air fell lousy with moisture. Kai started the car, turned the heat dial and rubbed his hands together. Bonnie was so preoccupied with the rain that she forgot the cold. She remembered that she missed it too, but as it crept into her bones and stiffened her joints, she was ready to scare it out with heat. She looked at herself in the rearview mirror and loved how wet her hair was, how it dripped, flattened around her sodden face. Her lips looked nearly blue and she worried, briefly, about pneumonia.

The windshield wipers swiped across in front of them. He put in a CD. Bonnie couldn't deny that she'd thought about him a lot over the last couple of days, not entirely sure whether the plan was to leave with or without him, or how long she wanted to be gone if she couldn't find the ascendant. It hurt her. After all her mind and her body went through since his return to Mystic Falls, the wormhole of redemption and acceptance, it hurt to walk away from. That pain alone told her that it had happened: they were in some kind of relationship.

She watched him tuck his sleeve into his fist and wax circles of visibility in the foggy windows, paying no attention to her, listening to music… it was so normal. He looked in that moment like a normal guy. But he wasn't and never would be, even if he tried. He couldn't be. But Bonnie understood now that she liked it that way. She liked _him_ that way. She liked him fucked up, temperamental and explosive. It made the times he was sweet to her even sweeter, and the times he was honest that much more true. Whether having these feelings was a good or bad thing, she had them. Whether she was truly bad inside and finding her niche in him, or he was truly good inside and finding his light in her, this was happening. Bonnie had a feeling it was a little of both. Lights and darks bruised the both of them in different ways at different times. Collectively, they were just a grey, hot mess.

The need to warm herself was beginning to agitate her. The world thrashed in water outside, and inside the car it was nervously calm. She looked at Kai and how his wet shirt clung to him. With all the water hung up on the two of them, it refracted the way his hum vibrated her and it set her teeth on edge. He was too close to her. He wasn't close enough.

Whether it was the right or wrong move that he happened to look over at her, she didn't know. His look was innocent, something meant to check her before he started driving. Whatever the look, that darkness in his eyes crooned to her. His magic, lively from recent accomplishments, radiated. Hers, now starved and withered, grasped for his. She noticed his lips set apart in rest, beads of rain shining across his jaw, cut through by the rivulets coursing down from his hair. As if her physical form was the fat to her magic's muscle, she leaned toward him. With more emotional charge than she expected, he met her halfway and took her mouth up in his.


	14. Chapter 14

_You really know how to ruin a girl's life._

It wasn't inaccurate.

Bonnie couldn't even know the level of accuracy her insult reached. Ruining lives was what he did best. Most times, he took pride in his work.

And still. Her words were disemboweling. Disheartening. Figuratively speaking, he wasn't supposed to have one, a heart. But a statement like this from a girl like her made his chest hurt and he was sure, figuratively, the heart was there. Bonnie was just the only person who knew its name and called it. Mad sorcery, on her part.

Another skill of hers was to dismantle him completely and then put all of his pieces back together with one redeeming exploit. Like apologizing. She apologized for the one thing nobody else ever could, and had the gall to do it after it was too late. Maybe she didn't mean it.

But then that kiss.

She surprised him. He wasn't expecting to look over at her and see her eyes brooding with desire. He physically couldn't _not_ kiss her.

Making out, as a concept, was never something that played into the ways he wanted her until that moment. It always seemed so dumb, and pointless, and gross. Slopping your face all over someone else's face and touching tongues…. It all just seemed so beat-around-the-bush. But then he saw her looking at him. She leaned, and the expression on her face told a conflicted story, but her lips were there and once he looked at them he couldn't stop looking and the only way to look away was to cover them up with his mouth, immediately. And he did, before he had even resolved consciously to kiss her. He put his mouth on her and his lips just sat there for a second, touching hers for no real reason. His heart started hammering and he exhaled into her, but he couldn't even get breathing right. The air came out of his mouth all long and shivery. He felt her lips quiver on his.

Her chin tilted up just slightly and from the corners of his eyes he noticed her shoulders shrinking in submission. He closed them and found solace in the darkness. Other sensations heightened. Like her breaths, coming faster now, but short, almost panicked. He could hear her heart going on faster and harder than his and he knew if he didn't take this further she would pull away. She would think harder about it and be withdrawn the entire drive home.

He lifted his hand and laid it on her neck, letting his uncertain fingers find their way along the skin. He thumbed her artery out of habit and quickly smoothed it away from that area, not wanting her to think this was about blood. He was quite positive by the human warmth spreading through his undead organs that this was about something else. Giving in to instinct, the muscles in his face pushed his lips into that kiss she was waiting for. To his delight, her lips mirrored him and it didn't feel gross. On the contrary, it felt like the best thing ever. Excited, he opened his kiss and nudged her tongue with his. The response was vehement.

In the cavern of their kiss, their tongues shared soft exchanges and violent swipes. It wasn't so consuming that he lost time; he felt every minute as it passed, heard every song as it played from beginning to end, yet could not find the boredom that usually claimed him after so long of one activity. No, he wanted to continue this for much longer. But it couldn't last, he knew. He knew by the urgency swelling in his blood, the progression of his actions, how every song that did pass required a new way of touching Bonnie, each change closer than the last to taking this one kiss the furthest it could go. The hand on her neck travelled up to cup her cheek, and trailed from there to graze down the front of her shirt. He concentrated on brushing his knuckles along her breast, winning a short moan uttered in a breath through her nose. He felt her hands timidly reach for him. One ironed his chest and one wrapped around his throat but applied no force. She was only feeling him. He liked that.

His hand on her dropped to her waist and pinched her body tight between his thumb and fingers, wanting nothing more than to wrench her from her seat and pull her onto him. And what did all of this mean? He was ready to fuck her; that was certain. But what was her intention? Just an hour ago, before he'd even found her, she was intent on abandoning him, again. Now she was fading into him. She made him wonder for three days whether she was even ok or not; just disappeared after leaving things on terms he thought were good, what with the text flirting. Now he was just supposed to let her back in and succumb to her random charms like it was so easy to forgive her for the pain she caused him? But she apologized. But how many times had he apologized to her without receiving the forgiveness he claimed he didn't want?

Letting a twist of anger influence his movements, he grabbed her waist with both hands and dug his fingers in. Instead of tensing, she moaned into his mouth.

 _God_ , her pulse sounded like his own blood pressure in his ears.

He felt the tingle of thirst in his jaws. In his frustration, the fangs drew down quicker than usual and he wanted to bite her bottom lip to a pulp.

He didn't need to push her away. She pulled.

"Your eyes," she breathily informed. All too quickly, his anger with her vanished and he wished she'd come back to him. But the moment was gone. She retracted to the far side of the passenger seat and narrowed her sharp eyebrows at him, the gleam of fear in her formerly desirous eyes prominent.

"Fuck," he cursed between his fangs, relaxing into his seat and staring ahead.

"Do you even drink from blood bags anymore, or am I your only one?"

"I would've had time to get some blood bags if I didn't have to chase you down," he snapped.

 _Back to the usual, then_.

Kai straightened himself up, ignoring Bonnie's disbelief trying to shame him from her side of the car. He shifted into drive and they were moving, leaving what happened at the wedding barn to stay at the wedding barn.

For the rest of the drive, he watched the clouds nervously. The storm looked like it stretched as far as he intended, far enough to get home before it passed, but as time wore on the clouds grew blacker and he gave himself more credit for his abilities. It looked like it would rain all day.

Occasionally he snuck a glance at Bonnie, who had lost herself in thought staring out her window. Her elbow was propped on the door and her chin rested in her hand. He noticed her smooth neck. The car began to vibrate loudly. He swerved over the grated asphalt that meant he was about to run them off the highway and they both snapped out of their reveries.

 _Fucking focus_ , he chided himself.

They eventually pulled up to her Grams' house and Bonnie seemed to level with herself. He expected her to need some alone time after the heated makeout session in his car and especially the following, light altercation. But she was hesitant to open up her door and get out.

She stared out at her front door pouting. "I don't want to be alone," she said.

 _Yes._ He thought for a moment before suggesting, "Slumber party?"

She nodded.

"Does this mean you're going to invite me in?" he asked, laying a set of daring eyes on hers after they bounced up from her lips.

She bit her lip in thought, but her narrowed eyebrows didn't convey much approval.

 _Whatever_.

"My place then?"

Five minutes later, they were walking into the little yellow house on Jubilee.

"I should've grabbed some pajamas, damn it. I need to get out of these clothes," Bonnie cursed. He realized only then how uncomfortable it was to move in the wet, weighted clothes he was wearing. She had more layers than he did, poor girl. _Let's get you out of those_. He suspected she was falling victim to prison world pros; she had gotten used to the instant solution of technical theft when something was needed, and often forgot to plan ahead. "Can I borrow one of your shirts?" she asked.

He wasn't sure if she was aware of how sexy she was being. Bonnie was the reserved type, but something evil twirled in her eyes. Maybe the freeform kindness she showed him earlier in the rain was turning her into a downright tease. Maybe she hadn't forgotten her pajamas after all.

"Yeah," and his voice lumped in his throat, "I'll go grab you one." He hurried up the stairs, peripherally catching her peeling her wet cardigan off. He hurried faster.

To his disappointment, she was not naked when he came back down. She was waiting patiently, politely, standing still and tense with her arms folded underneath the cardigan, draping it in front of her almost protectively. He approached her pursing his lips, wringing a very dry, very carefully selected David Bowie shirt. She offered him a hint of a smile but it didn't last longer than a blink.

"Here," he handed her the shirt and she accepted it. For a second, he wouldn't let go, but when she gave up too quickly on pulling it, he gave up on teasing her. He felt like an idiot.

"I smell like rain," she admitted as she bit her lip guiltily.

"That's a bad thing?"

"I'm sorry you went and got that, but I should go home. I'm a mess. I didn't think."

"Stay," he pleaded, feeling that weight in his chest again.

"I shouldn't. Really. I don't know what was going through my head. I need a shower, I need food, and…"

"You're rambling. Bathroom's down the hall. I'll microwave something. It'll be ready by the time you get out."

"Kai…" she sighed.

"Bonnie..." he sighed back.

After a short stand-off, she hung her head and shuffled down the hall. He watched her disappear around the corner and sucked his bottom lip into a nervous grin. Bonnie Bennett was about to get naked in his house. It was for a shower behind a locked door, but still. _Score_.

After he changed into dry clothes, he set up some music, choosing a more modern rock band he hoped she would appreciate better than his grunge classics. He flicked his wrist and all the candles between the living room and the kitchen lit up. He was going to make this rainy day in Hell a romantic proposal she couldn't refuse.

* * *

Bonnie turned the knobs in the humble shower and let the first spurts of cold water shake her out of the feeling that she wanted Kai to intrude. She had left the door unlocked, hoping he would be a pervert and test the handle. If he did and found that it wasn't locked, she believed her carelessness would inform him it was intentional.

Shower sex, she knew, wasn't the most romantic. It was the dirtier, more desperate kind of sex she felt that she needed. It was how she intended to keep herself from giving in to sentiment while she experimented.

As the water became warm and she felt the dried rain run off her naked body, she let herself be swept away by the memory of how his mouth felt. How his stubble scratched her and even though it begged her nerves to pure awareness of him and what she was doing with him, she kept on. How he manhandled her sides like he couldn't stand not being able to have her right that second, like he wanted to rip apart the piece of car that separated driver's seat from passenger. How she felt the same and the lust blooming like a smart tumor in her was so overwhelming it shushed all shame.

They were alone in the world.

Bonnie was no distressed damsel, but who else would fill the voids that she deemed ready for filling? And who would judge her for letting him? Only herself, but even she was bound to dissolve from this world by falling in love with him some time or another.

 _Falling in love. Now you've lost it_.

Cheap, meaningless shower sex. She needed it now. Now, now, now, to crush the romanticism making her dizzy in the steam. Crush it to oblivion. Now, to stop the heart beat frustrating her cunt. Now, to stop her cunt from cutting up her brain. Now, to close with ceremonious finality the chapter of her life in which her body fell loyal to Jeremy, and that chapter's interlude in which she wondered briefly if it was stuck with Damon. Her body was stuck, now, with Kai.

She made herself heady waiting. The steam got to be too much and she stopped hoping he would come, knowing that if she waited any longer he would only come out of concern and find her passed out. That wouldn't be attractive. But it sounded just tragic enough to appeal to her in a morbid way.

She was beginning to scare herself…

Little time was spent assessing her appearance in the mirror. Kai of all people would take her as she came. She knew that much was true. She left her rain clothes in a heap on the floor and dressed herself in his T-shirt, braless. He had only one towel hanging on the rack and it had been used. It hung twisted, still damp in the middle from his last shower. She took it up and dried her hair with it, his smell coming off on her from the dark green fibers; it was a combination of his shampoo which she had already used and the other hint that was just part of the homey way he smelled. The towel didn't reek and that was good enough for her.

After soaking the water from her hair, she wrapped the towel around her hips and tied its corners. It would have to act as a long skirt. She wished suddenly and dearly that she had something more presentable to wear on her bottom half than a towel.

Having washed herself of the day's kindnesses, and kiss, she felt renewed. Not like a new Bonnie, or even like her troubles were less troublesome. She felt renewed to the state of herself that had more of a mind not to just up and fuck Kai. As tantalizing as the idea of just going at it with him or any man at this point was, self-control must prevail. It was the cornerstone of her personality. She recalled first coming to terms with being a witch and learning to control her magic, how it made her feel scared, confused, conflicted about her identity at times. When the ability to just bend physics at her own will became hers, she understood and vowed to herself with deep internal conviction that self-control must become her greatest strength.

It clicked while she was eating. They sat in their usual spot, across from each other at the island. He'd microwaved a couple of cheap instant dinners in plastic trays that came with an entrée and two sides. Both dinners were different and every other minute they would reach across the island and fork something off from the other's tray. He still hadn't quite gotten used to the fact that she was wearing a towel for pants and wasn't talking his usual storm. She stared in thought at the candle flame delicately swaying between them. And it hit her.

She was a fucking witch.

"Oh my god," she said before she finished chewing her bite of corn. He looked up. It was the first thing to be said in what felt like ten minutes.

"We're fucking witches," she said.

He stopped chewing for a second, widened his eyes and said, "No way."

She ignored him and continued her train of thought out loud, "Magic is…is…pure willpower. It's you answering your own prayer. And we can do it."

"Neat, isn't it?"

"Kai…we don't need some stupid ascendant."

He laid his fork down and wiped his mouth. With a frown, he declared, "You are incessant."

"Just listen. Whoever made the first prison world had to come up with the idea and make the spell that performed what they wanted. Just because they willed it to exist, it did. Kai, we can will ourselves out. We can find a loophole in this world and magic ourselves out. We just need to create a new spell so that we don't need the ascendant. Maybe we can spell some kind of bridge between this world and the real one, I don't know. But it's possible. It's fucking magic, anything is possible!"

Bonnie smiled with the confidence flitting inside her and waited for him to catch up. She waited for the dull disappointment on his face to perk up, for him to feel inspired with her, feel hopeful, feel anything. He took a swig of his beer and swished it around in his mouth, rolling his eyes in what she hoped was consideration of her idea. Finally he swallowed, set his beer down and leaned toward her with his elbows on the island. He gazed dreamily into her eyes but she couldn't tell all of a sudden whether this was his poker face or not.

"You know how I always ruin every moment we have with my bloodthirst?" he started. "You're the same way, but about getting out of here."

Bonnie tightened her jaw and pursed her lips. She refused to let the falling sensation in her chest swallow her whole.

"Why can't you let me have one shred of hope?"

"Any hope here is false hope. You're just leading yourself on."

"Like you're being honest with yourself that you'll be able to make it here like you did last time? What are you gonna do when eighteen years pass and nobody has conveniently dropped in with your key out? What are you gonna do when a hundred years pass and you're still twenty two, and you're fucking crazy from being alone?"

"I'm not alone."

"You will be. Or do you think I'm gonna just be here forever? I'm human, Kai. I know I've been throwing the concept around like it's nothing, but what are you gonna do when I die?"

He turned his eyes down and Bonnie braced herself to hear something she didn't want to. He began picking at the paper label around his beer bottle.

"I guess…I'll sit in this chair, drink myself to sleep, wake up in the morning and begin a new fucking day."

The thought of him being alone again and fine with it imprinted a kind of welt on what felt like her soul. At least in his imagination he mourned her enough to get drunk. She knew he didn't mean any of it. Without her, he would lose it. Over the last few weeks, for as much as they fought it and each other, they had grown close. Just like she and Damon grew close in 1994. Spending enough time with one other person and nobody else would do that. They could be worst enemies or best friends, or both at the same time, and it wouldn't change the fact that they needed each other.

She was too exhausted. That and her dignity kept her from crying him a river this time. She stood up and took her tray to the trash can. Without looking at him, she started to walk out of the kitchen.

"Where are you going?" he called angrily.

"Couch. I need a minute. And when you're done you pick the fucking movie this time."

* * *

When she opened her eyes, the movie was over. The TV was off. All the candles had died and the room was gloomy with the utter darkness of a cloudy night that let no moon shine its guiding light. The rain still fell in dying smatterings on the tinny gutters, barely patting the wet streets, too weak to hit the windows anymore. It would vanish by morning.

She'd awakened with a small gasp because something touched her.

She thought she felt him leave at one point in the movie, or maybe she imagined him muttering about being too tired and going to bed. She was too hazy with sleep to respond, though a mute part of her reached out and pulled him back to stay, if only to fall asleep on the couch with her. Whatever actually happened, he was there now.

It felt more violent of an awakening than it was meant to be. All Bonnie saw when her eyes snapped open in the darkness was the darker form of Kai standing over her.

* * *

 **Author Note: Thank you to everyone who's been following, favoriting, reading and reviewing. The suggestions and wishes and wonders and compliments are just what I need as I'm trying tirelessly to pound this out before school starts. The sleepless nights are real. If things go according to schedule, The Invitation Barrier will be a complete story by next Wednesday.** ** _If._** **It is entirely possible that I will favor time and care over speed. Either way, I will try to round it out nicely with a little bit of what everyone wants to see. Again, thank you thank you thank you. (And yes, the David Bowie shirt in this chapter is a tribute. R.I.P.)**


	15. Chapter 15

**Author Note: I should stop making sweeping declarations about finishing things and anything in context of "according to schedule." This is most def not the final chapter of TIB.**

 **15**

In the instant she gasped, he stilled the hand that had just started to trace the twitching artery on her neck. It was initially the thing that woke her up.

"What are you doing?" she demanded to know, still curled up on her side of the couch where she'd fallen asleep. In fatigue, she limited her reaction to lifting her heavy head to gape and glare at him.

His features came into focus and they appeared guilty. Even guiltier was the vein of thirst wriggling back under his skin to hide.

"I was gonna try the Dracula thing," he admitted outright.

"What Dracula thing?" she snapped, feeling her heart beat in budding fury.

"Feed on you in your sleep so you wouldn't know."

"Why?!"

"You fell asleep and I was still hungry but I didn't wanna wake you…"

"Next time wake me!" she snarled a little more viciously than she meant.

"Will do," he agreed. "Hey, now that you're up…"

Bonnie groaned and squeezed her eyes shut.

"I'm so hungry," he pleaded. " _Thirsty_ , I mean."

"Fine," she muttered, savoring every last bit of sleep left in her body. Even with her eyes closed, Kai's overbearing grin of relief was irritating.

"You don't even have to move," he promised.

"Good," she said, relaxing back into the couch.

"You can even go back to sleep if you want."

"As if."

She heard him rest his weight on the arm of the couch above her head. His hand returned to that spot on her neck it had been casing before she woke up. She opened one eye to peek at him and he was leaning over her, the veins of thirst already splitting back down from his darkening eyes. He buried his face in the crook of her neck and it took much effort on her part not to bunch her shoulder up and butt him out. Now she wasn't sure how she was going to keep herself down for this. Every feed before, their bodies were both upright and she was free to squirm as much as he would tolerate. Lying down, she was stuck.

His tongue again, like the readying wipe before a needle in her skin, brushed his spot of choice. Instantly, her blood rushed to it, and to her cheeks, and to her cunt. To push the blood back up to her brain, she pulled her knees into a tighter curl in her chest. He couldn't get to her if she made herself into a knot. As she moved, a light wind swathed her thighs and she remembered with blushing shock that she was still wearing only a towel around her legs. She fidgeted around to make sure no part of her was betrayed by the towel until Kai whispered, "You're fine." And she let it go.

She realized when his fangs tore in that she was excruciatingly sober. She was going to feel everything. No twist of pain or touch of pleasure would escape her awareness. A small whine slipped from her mouth in longing for the gin he kept in the kitchen. The noise caused goosebumps she could see coming up on his arm. _Don't make a sound_. _He likes that_.

The weakening exit of blood began and she couldn't tell really when or how it happened but Kai, in blood fever, wasn't on his feet anymore. He was slowly working his way onto the couch with her, his knees carefully treading the cushion so as not to roll her. The heat growing in his belly warmed her hip as his body hovered over hers.

Bonnie thought back to what she wanted while she was in the shower, and then to the first fantasy she had of him when she was at home, in the dark like this, feeling heavy like this, imagining him above her like this. She thought back to the very real kiss they had that morning. With the right shift of hip, she could make it happen again. The rest would follow. It would be so easy. The only question was whether she really wanted it.

 _Don't_.

Her thoughts darted back to 1994, and that time he chased her through the hospital, when she had to hobble away from him with an arrow wound in her belly, using wit more than speed to get away from him. It couldn't be forgotten that the first time he embraced her was when he jumped into the car with her and held her tight against her will, shushing her, getting close, saying things she didn't like, using his strength against her and wouldn't let her go. She'd felt his breath in her ear, his eyes on her skin, his forceful manner crushing her spirit like a flower in a child's palm. She really hated him then, and knew it for certain. This particular moment was the wedge driven core-deep between them and she believed right then that nothing would ever change that. Nothing he could do would ever make that panic leave her. Even still, however quickly it entered and left, every time she saw his face a shot of fright ran through her heart. Who knew in as little time as a year they would go from that traumatic exchange to _this_. This warm, comfortably close and closely sexual circumstance.

 _Don't_.

It was possible that Kai wasn't even interested in that at the moment. She knew it was some kind of instinct for him to get close when he fed. He couldn't help it, couldn't control it. Everything about feeding that struck her as sexual he claimed was normal, or _involuntary_. But the way he held himself over her scrunched body made her want to un-scrunch. It made her want to stretch her legs, bend them up again, spread them.

 _Don't_.

"Kai," she bleated. She could almost hear her own voice. She was getting used to the strain of speaking with holes in her neck. Somehow, this time, he paid attention. The fangs drew out and she sat up, forcing him to back off. She was surprised he was able to stop himself feeding, but the calmness in his features utterly impressed her.

"What?" he asked dazed, her blood shining on his lips. His voice lacked the empathetic tone she wanted to hear, _needed_ to hear to vindicate the way she was feeling about him.

"I just need a second to wake up," she said, and she hugged herself. The heat coming down over her face made her feel like rushing outside to stand under the last of the rain and let it cool her. She needed to catch her breath, calm her mind.

"What's wrong with you?" he asked, starting to sound a bit agitated. His eyes were narrowed and his top lip curving up. It was the hunger, she gathered. Still, his tone made her defensive. For her own pride she had to ruin this as much as she could before he ruined her.

"You," she answered. "You're wrong with me."

"So go home," he dared, officially calling her bluff. The thought of just getting up and leaving entered Bonnie's mind as an option that she forgot she had. But she didn't want to leave him. It was like the fibers in her soul were becoming stitched to him. She didn't like it, and she didn't think it had anything to do with love, or respect, or admiration, or any of those unfortunate ideas she wasn't ready to wrap her head around when it came to Kai… It was a simple attachment, but an attachment nonetheless.

She settled on standing her ground. "Don't be mean," she said.

"Ditto."

"Fine."

Glancing at the nonexistent watch on his wrist, he said, "It's been a second."

She rolled her eyes. "Just hurry up and take your fill. I'm tired."

"Bonnie, you would die if I took my fill," he said matter-of-factly and she made an irritated sound. Then, smirking like he had a new bad idea, he asked, "D'you wanna watch?" She shot him an uncertain scowl.

With his mouth open in anticipation, he picked up her hand in both of his and brought it to his mouth. She let him, not really knowing why, and watched in disgust as he brushed her palm across his cheek. He pressed his lips to her wrist, pleading the pulse to the ends of her veins. He flicked his dark eyes up to hers before biting in, to watch her eyelids flutter while she hissed. She hated seeing him do this to her and at the same time she couldn't look away. She grimaced through the first throbs of pain until it dulled, when she found that she had to suppress a moan from nowhere.

 _No._

How could she like this?

So soon, he unlatched from her wrist. She breathed out in relief until he let his lips drag a trail of blood from her wrist to her inner forearm and bit in again. Bonnie watched intently this time how he nearly shivered the second her blood hit his tongue. She watched his shoulders move up and down with impatient breaths and realized she was beginning to match his breathing pattern. Whatever was happening to her was his intention, some sick form of seduction that probably worked much better when both participants were vampires. And still…it was disturbingly arousing. Again Kai loosened his jaw and moved on to the next spot… How many wounds would she have by the end of this? He set his sights on her shoulder and she noticed he was getting her back down again as she lowered in retreat with each inch he advanced.

Simultaneous impulses to fight against being laid down and to kiss him warred in her burning chest. Clenching her stomach muscles to still her body in refusal, she aimed to stop his encroaching mouth with her own but his hunger dominated hers. In their coinciding leans toward each other, he forwent his bite-by-bite seduction and nabbed at her neck again, sliding his fangs into the same holes he already created. It warranted an inadvertent yell from Bonnie. Fantastic pain radiated through her neck with his reentry. His response to her yell was a tight descent deeper into the flesh, to which she squealed. It felt too damaging, firstly, and secondly she didn't think she'd ever been bitten harder. He really was trying to kill her.

They breathed together that way for a moment, through their noses. The boy with his mouth full of blood and the girl with her mouth clamped shut in difficult patience, they inhaled and exhaled in unrealized unison, separately suffering unique miseries, and together one swelling and deflating mass.

 _It's okay_.

 _This is okay._

 _Wait it out._

The next second, Kai's ravenous feed had him slamming her backward into the couch. Forget self-restraint, forget polite clenching of stomach muscles in attempt to take things slow; woman down. And in his zeal he seemed to find no use in holding himself respectfully above her. He lowered his body without any indecision to rest heavily upon hers.

Despite her agony and the fearsome speed with which things advanced, Bonnie let them take their course. It was partly a self-challenge to widen her own pain threshold, to increase her tolerance because if she could admit anything to herself it was that pain was always coming. Another factor helping her get through this was his desperation, and the desire to look past the immediacy of _her problems_ and _his problems_ and their _intertwined problems_ to see a complicated creature in basic need. He needed her. It was obvious by his hand weaving into her hair and clenching fistfuls of strands at their roots to the rhythm of her pulse, of his own sucking, in absent mind. Bonnie recognized the purity of this nature and felt inclined to honor it. So caring, she even laid her hand on his back and caressed comforting zig-zags, staring through watering eyes at the ceiling above, looking for patterns to distract and lessen her sense of self.

 _Who am I now_?

Finally, he withdrew. Instantly her body fell slack with relief and she noticed how stiff she'd been. Kai bit next into his own wrist. Eagerly, she didn't wait for him to lower the wound to her lips. She grabbed his arm and pulled. She needed his blood too terribly and actually savored the taste when it flooded her mouth.

He moaned when she started sucking. The sound of it sent a pang to the spot between her legs and she sucked more fervently, wanting him to do that again, make that sound. She knew how disgusting it was and she knew she might hate herself later for it, but for the second time and with complete purpose, she tongued the veins in his wrist, spreading them like cords and running the tip of her tongue sensually between them. The need to squeeze her eyes shut in shame was defeated by the desire to watch Kai's roll back into his head. Tingles of accomplishment jazzed her as his jaws cranked open for the throaty moan that fell out.

His eyes returned and set, half lidded, upon her. The juicing wrist in her mouth was removed and he replaced it aggressively with his lips.

Bonnie could feel her own cooled blood on his lips, being passed warm from his tongue to hers, and she didn't care. Her old self, she knew, would be outraged. Something in that made her kiss him even more violently. To defy even her own standards felt so good. Relishing the defiance, she used her tongue to scrape all the blood she could reach from his mouth until she coated the inside of hers and their respective blood became one substance. And she needed more, to be closer, to feel him, to put something against the part of her that ached to be touched.

Her legs, caught up in the tied-off towel, struggled to stretch outward from their bend underneath his weight. Frustrated, she reached down and loosened the knot at her hip. Seconds later he jammed her legs apart with his knee. In agreement, she slipped one leg down along his side and pulled her other leg up into a point at his hip. She could feel that galling erection wanting her, feel his encumbered bulk waiting impatiently behind the thin layer of his sweatpants. It still wasn't enough. Without thought, Bonnie lifted her hips a trifle up from the couch. All she wanted was to be closer to that hardness, regardless of the consequences. Months of unintended abstinence fired up behind her and her body wanted, needed, retribution.

In the kiss, she licked the sharp tips of his still descended fangs and received a punishing slit. New blood leaked into their mouths and Bonnie winced, but the pain was quickly forgotten when he rolled his hips to push his taunting hardness into her. A few more of these thrusts occurred at random before their bodies were moving in accidental rhythm. Her cunt positively ached for the attention to get better, and for him to get closer, but his pants and the last remaining flap of towel between them prevented relief.

She didn't care anymore about the horrible things he'd done to her; he'd been forgiven, and with the lust pounding in her head, she was forgetting. The simple acceptance that _Kai will be Kai_ was enough of a blackhearted amendment to even propel the teeth-grinding desire possessing her body to writhe against him. And oh, how good it felt to lie in the erratic good graces of a bad fucking man. How good it felt to be the object of his desire, the exception to his wrath, and to open her thighs in the light of his terribly temporary affection. _Bad fucking man_. Did it make her a bad girl? Would he like that?

She didn't even check in with herself before her hand was fumbling for the towel and clawing that cock-blocking nuisance away to let her free, bare cunt feel the fabric of his pants.

As if he had been waiting for this admittance, Kai plunged his hand between them to thumb down the band of his sweatpants. Against her labia, she felt his tip begin its immediate search. She stuck her hand into the hollow of their sexes and gripped him, sliding her palm along the veins throbbing so humanly as she guided him down the center of her blooming cunt. She was wet enough to gasp at herself and it was easy for his tip to glide in.

They moaned into each other's mouths at the first entrance.

Wasting no time, Kai withdrew only to ram his entire length deep in and Bonnie broke free from kissing him to cry out. It didn't hurt as much as it relieved her to feel something reach that far for the first time in forever.

He pulled out again and rippled back down for a second deep thrust and already Bonnie was beginning to feel the heat of an oncoming orgasm. Like her body was building up for this before she ever thought it would happen. Her ribcage shuddered and her breasts tossed as she arched her spine, nipples peaking through the loose T-shirt she wore. Gaping down at her, Kai tore the shirt upward to reveal her chest and marvel at her breasts. Apparently overcome, he bowed his head down between them to decorate her diaphragm with a vicious little nip while pumping her with a third, thorough thrust. In the fourth thrust, she felt him, heavy inside her, twitch, and over the course of their fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth breathy thrusts they reached the pinnacle of pleasure. Their bodies, still mostly clothed, shivered against each other and they panted and she howled hers and he groaned his and she could feel hot fluid glazing her inside. The warmth traveled up as her vagina ushered it in lingering contractions. Her body so wanted a seed to sow.

"Fuck," Bonnie whimpered, remembering that condoms were a thing and a recommended one.

"Hell yeah we did," he panted in her ear.

"Without protection."

"Vamp-cum is sterile," he reminded in a sigh, kissing the top of her throat, "No Gemini twins for you. Sorry."

"Darn it," she joked dreamily, noting inwardly how soft her tone had turned. So fucking him made her docile. She could see how that might annoy her tomorrow, but in the moment she felt so satisfied with him that she wanted to give him a blowjob. However, he was spent. Not bothering to detach himself from her, he used her right breast like a pillow, breathed, and after a few moments passed out.

For a short time, Bonnie couldn't sleep.

She just had sex with a sociopath. Unplanned, unprotected, fifteen-second and somehow _good_ sex, with Kai Parker. A fucking quickie, with Kai Parker.

 _What in the worlds_.


	16. Chapter 16

He tried not to hate the fluidity with which she moved about the house.

Sunlight peeked in from outside, untouched by yesterday's magically manufactured rainstorm. If he was guessing, he'd say it was six thirty. Seven at the latest. Whatever it was, that sun would be giving them its all. It was the prime time for sneaking out.

He lay on the couch where she left him after slipping out from underneath his sleeping form. The first shiver of wakefulness across her skin had in turn awakened him but he continued to play sleep, making himself heavier on purpose to give her a good hard time getting up.

He listened to her lithe body cut the air through the hallway, peeking just in time to catch the bottom of her tight ass turning the corner and he grinned. He heard the rustle of her clothes, only half dry, being picked up, her change of breath. She stayed gone a moment and the ascendant just upstairs crossed his mind. Bonnie didn't strike him as the snooping type, but she did tend to be the unpredictable type at times. Her quickening heartbeat sounded louder in his ears as she rounded by the couch again and he heard her padding on the tips of her feet into the kitchen, the familiar sound of the cap on his Tanqueray being unscrewed, followed by a sloshing. A swallowing. The cap's replacement.

He had been wondering if she had a problem; more often than not, though she exuded no motor evidence, she reeked of liquor. Now he was certain the shooters he dumped out of her purse the day before weren't packed for the road but simply an accessory, something he could probably dump out of her purse on any given day. He would have to decide later whether to ignore her habit until she got over it on her own or throw her an intervention party. She'd like the latter for sure.

The inevitable swishing and creaking of her approach to the front door filled his ear and it was time to make his move or let her leave. It was both cute and enraging how sneaky she obviously thought she was.

"Double cappuccino," he said from the couch. All movement halted.

He stood and advanced toward her, valuing the doe-in-headlights look on her face yet he couldn't help but burn in the notion that she should feel closer to him by now. After last night especially.

"Excuse me?" she said, narrowing her eyes. At least she wasn't trying to act innocent.

"You're going to pick up breakfast, right? I'll have a double cappuccino. And a donut. Oh, wait…you weren't sneaking out, were you? That would be so awkward. I mean considering what's done is done and the only person you can admit to later that you slept with the monster who ruined your life is, um, me, the monster who ruined your life."

He crossed his arms and she crossed one leg over the other, pursing her lips at him in uncertainty how to respond. He wanted to maul those lips out of their pout.

She had changed back into her own clothes. They were wrinkled and still damp; he could smell the rank aroma of old rain coming off them.

"Why don't you just walk home naked? No one will notice," he pressed.

Uncomfortably she clutched her bag to her stomach and lowered her eyes. It was unlike her not to spit a tart retort back at him. Something was bothering her. Something had her down. He opened his mouth to say another crude thing when she flitted forward and pecked him on the cheek. Feeling the heat of an embarrassing blush rising to his cheeks, he suppressed the wide-mouthed grin trying to tear through his face and looked at her sternly.

"What's that for?"

"Let's get breakfast," she proposed, her face just as stern.

"I can't," he said, gesturing toward the sunniness outside.

"Think you can make it rain again?" she asked.

He considered this. An invitation to both siphon and eat breakfast with his favorite girl sounded like a good morning indeed.

"For you? I can make it snow."

She bit her lip as she stepped forward. He reached for her shoulder and faltered, suddenly unsure which patch of her skin to pull the magic from, where to touch her, where to hurt her. Now that he was officially welcome to siphon, he overthought it. He felt confused by her demeanor. At last he chose the typical surface of her arm and gripped both in his hands, drumming his fingers over her soft skin trying to ignore the weight her energy threatened. Her magic, normally so hot, ready and hardy, felt dim. Wilted. She felt dying. But she was very alive before him, pushing her bottom lip out and looking down, anticipating pain. He wanted to disappoint the expectation this time. The promise of power to course through him, however, trumped all softness. Plus, wouldn't she look so cute in a scarf?

He tightened his fingers and squeezed her, concentrating on the whirl of humming inside her. Like a breath he pulled her power into him. Unusually, it left him feeling feather-light and paper-thin.

"Why are you holding back?" he asked.

"I'm not doing anything," she insisted without feeling.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"You're lying."

"So?"

He jerked her in his grip, trying only to shake the magic out if he could and realizing too late that he was being violent and it wasn't okay with Bonnie. Yet the jolt of fear it aroused in her enlivened her magic as well. He could feel it climbing to the ends of her nerves and out of her skin, a slowly waking creature seeping out from its cave within her, called to action by distress.

He closed his eyes and concentrated harder. With all his might he scoured her body, the pained sounds of her protest just barely breaking through like a bell in the distance. When he opened his eyes again, she was a panting heap of bones before him and the light coming in was no longer yellow but white.

Fucking gorgeous magic.

After a short stop at a department store where they could each grab a decent winter outfit, (hard to do while the store was stocked for summer), they made use of the tools in a local café where they would then sit to enjoy the fruits, or rather coffees, or their own labor. From the display case, Kai stole two chocolate muffins and a slice of banana loaf, most of which was already gone by the time he sat, and Bonnie stole herself a bear claw which she picked at gloomily.

Between swallowing a large chunk of muffin and taking a large gulp of his cappuccino, Kai declared, "So I've been weighing the pros and cons for the last, like, hour… I think it's time we just stop this dance already and move in together." Bonnie almost choked on the morsel in her mouth, but Kai continued. "My place is yellow and awesome, but small, and your place is cute and all, but kind of depressing, don't you think? I mean like why did your dad never sell it? And it's creepy how all of Sheila's things are still in there. But anyway. We can shop around, this world is ours basically so why hold back, you know? Let's find a mansion, settle down, have a couple imaginary kids…"

"Never. In. A million. Years."

" _Somebody_ woke up on the wrong side of the couch."

"Fuck you," she said gently and sympathetically, without the bite she usually injected.

"Check. Last night. On the couch," he smirked, reaching for his cappuccino.

Bonnie spat a spell and Kai's mug burst into fragments, the hot liquid spattering all over him. He hissed at the steaming droplets rolling on his skin and brushed himself off, impressed at such a quick switch from calm to nasty insults. She seemed so off today. Maybe the world was dismantling her at last. Oh what fun he would have putting the pieces of Bonnie Dumpty back together again.

"Jeez. I thought _I_ wasn't a morning person."

"Tell me, Kai," she said with a hint of a slur and he was forced to wonder if she'd snuck any other sips of liquor in the changing room back at the department store, "What exactly are the pros to living with _you_?"

He grinned, preparing a mental list.

"Well," he began, "Repeat of last night, obviously. You get the benefits of my mad kitchen skills, whether it's in the kitchen or in bed, and also my mad bed skills, whether it's in bed or in the kitchen. I'm a light sleeper, so if anything ever goes bump in the night I'm on it, and trust me, I know how those prison world spooks go. You know nothing is there, but you want to feel like you're not alone so bad that you create it and then it feels like there's a ghost and it's fucking terrifying."

"That's normal? I thought I was crazy."

"Yeah, you're not delusional. Only it didn't start happening to me until I was three years in, so you might have a loose screw. Anyway, what else… Sex anytime you want it. You feel the need, I got the seed- _hey!_ " Bonnie had torn a piece of her bear claw and flung it at him. " _Companionship_ ," he emphasized. "Not to mention the fact that you'll have somebody to throw stuff at, since one of us tends to be a violent Vanessa. And…did I already say sex?"

"And the cons?" she asked, chucking her entire bear claw at him.

He flinched, but wasn't fazed. "Trick question. There are none."

"I see."

"Oh except that I don't do laundry. I can, I'm not like an idiot or anything. I just choose not to. I mean, can you picture it?"

"Are you serious?"

He nodded.

"Do you ever wear clean clothes?"

"Duh. I just throw away the dirty ones and go find clean ones."

"Wow. Just…wow."

"Wow as in _wow_ , or wow as in _Kai, I need more convincing to live in a sex mansion with you_?"

"Would you like to hear _my_ cons?"

"No, but sure. Because I'm a good listener, and total roommate material."

"I think if I move in with you, I'll end up killing you. And then you'll get mad. And I'll have to kill you again in self-defense. Who knows, I could spend the rest of my eternity sitting beside your dead body, waiting for you to wake up so I can just keep killing you. And that doesn't sound very becoming, I don't think my Grams would be very proud, so let's just keep our distance, ok?"

"And the pros?"

"Trick question."

"Ouch. Not even orgasms on demand?"

"What is your deal? You get to put it in a girl for the first time in twenty years and suddenly we're married and you get to harass me as if it's _ever_ going to happen again?"

"Wait, back it up… Twenty years?" he laughed. "You think I'm harassing you because I'm desperate?"

She rolled her eyes.

"Bonnie, Bonnie," he tsk-tsked. "Remember that time when I stabbed you and escaped 1994, or was that so horrible that it just never happened in Bonnie-land? Remember that little blip in my life when I wasn't a prisoner in a fake Gemini world?"

She stared.

"I was a male stuck in solitary confinement for 18 years at my sexual prime. What do you think was the first order of business when I got out?"

"But who would—?"

"Fucked some twentysomething girl in a bathroom stall at the airport. Sounds risqué but that was the easy part. The hard part was being around so many people all of a sudden. But hey, the dick wants what it wants. I just shut off my nerves and it did all the thinking. Steered me like a bang compass."

"I don't need to hear anything else," she said, waving her hand as if she could shoo away the things he was telling her.

"No worries, it was totally consensual and legit and she walked away from it mostly okay. Although I may have broken the stall door with her."

"Moving on."

"My point is I'm not desperate, ok Bon? But hey, what about you? First conquest when you got out?"

He waited with a smile, though in secret he seethed. He didn't feel threatened by the idea of Bonnie being with Jeremy, or any other men, and he didn't feel bothered by the image of it in his mind. Contrarily he enjoyed that she was experienced, that she had indeed been with other men and after all would have sex with him as well. He was comfortable enough in their "non"-relationship to know that even if they zapped back into reality that minute, Bonnie would find unexpected comfort in him and in their history, in the misery they'd shared in their world together. It was the stuff of a Twilight Zone that nobody on the outside could ever hope to relate to, and because of how it bonded them she would inevitably remain more or less a part of his life. _Hopefully more than less_. What he couldn't stand the thought of, and what he wanted violently not to hear, was anything about Damon.

Kai was a fan of logic and he knew quite well that he had nothing to worry about. But he also knew or could somehow sense something in Bonnie that once fell, not in love or even like, but in _curious_ with Damon. That part of her was now an unhealable wound left by his betrayal.

Bonnie didn't say anything. She picked a crumb off her plate and took her time chewing on it, looking down or out at the snow falling, anywhere but at Kai. And he understood.

"Oh how the tables have turned," he grinned in both amusement and relief.

Bonnie was quick to reject his fun.

"If you knew how much you damaged me you'd know that I wasn't looking for conquests when I got out. And I'm still not. I actually asked you to breakfast because I want your face full of sugar when I tell you that what we did last night can't happen again. And in fact I'm dying to go home and be alone. I don't think we should see each other for a few weeks."

His heart.

 _A few weeks_? How was he supposed to survive a few weeks without her? And how was _she_ supposed to survive seeing him after those weeks were over? The hunger would have him ripping her to shreds at the first heartbeat in his ear.

She started collecting herself to get up. He couldn't choose to be clingy and beg her not to do this, or to lay back and let her rip his heart out. He felt a longing for her so dark and ugly inside him clawing away at his guts, trying to scare up some kind of protest; malicious words to cut her back, unfavorable actions to make her stay.

"When you get sick of loneliness, don't call me," he said. She frowned at him and he finished his thought, "Because I'll be desiccating somewhere and you'll probably need to nurse me back to health."

"Don't be dramatic," she scolded. "You have blood bags. And can you even desiccate here?"

He shrugged and she shook her head.

"Goodbye, Kai," she said. And headed for the door.

An ear-splitting crash stopped her in her tracks. The glass of the display case burst, showering the floor of the café in crystals and shards. Bonnie glared back at Kai. With the furrow of a single brow he swiped all tablecloths off of their tables, adding a cacophony of crashing plates, silverware, glasses and stupid little vases to the mess. Not lifting his eyes from Bonnie's for even a second, he stood, twisted his arm upward and all the chairs in the café rose to float several feet off the ground.

"You're throwing a tantrum," Bonnie pointed out. "It's unattractive."

He let his fingers relax and all chairs fell with intended force, most of them snapping into wood chunks. He tried to tell her with a dull facial expression that he didn't care what she thought. He was hurt and he wanted to break things.

Bonnie put her hand on the doorknob to open it, and Kai willed it not to give. She began twisting it in frustration and the door wouldn't budge. Finally she groaned and threw her hands up.

"Let me go," she demanded. "Now."

"Okay, um, no."

"You know you just created about fifty sharp weapons out of wooden chair legs, right? I _will_ kill you."

"Not if I kill you first."

She scoffed, "That's an old joke. Give it up, Kai. You're a teddy bear now. You can't kill me. You couldn't do it when it mattered, and you can't do it today. I wish you could, but, what's one more disappointment?"

Too angry to use magic, he resorted to the physical coping mechanism he knew all too well. He grabbed the edges of the table they'd been sitting at and turned it over. With vampire strength, it got some air and snapped in half under his grip before it ever touched the floor. He could see she was gritting her teeth and he was glad that he finally set her nerves on edge. He hadn't really lost his knack for that.

"Look at big man Malachai, throwing tables at a café," she derided. "You should be embarrassed. You can't kill me, and now you can't even handle your anger like an adult. It's so middle-grade villain, it's sad."

He went for her next, daring her to doubt him again. He herded her back against the door and slammed his hands on either side of her, caging her. She seemed unimpressed, but was still grinding her teeth in tightened jaws.

"Tell me I can't kill you, just one more time. Tell me that I can't," he growled, letting his breath fan her face, moving thin tendrils of hair to frame her unchanging expression.

"You can't," she stated quietly. And he knew she was right, but the fucking nerve. He stared into her eyes and they were miserable black pools. She was too calm, it unsettled him deep within. Though he was already in a rage, he felt his guts drooping inside of him. He knew it was partly a reaction of magic… With the connection they shared as born witches, emotions of a certain height were bound to affect the other in both mental and physical ways. He could ignore her sadness for an impressive amount of time, but this day was different. She was dripping with detachment and it drilled into his brain like a slow, agonizing screw.

He banged his hands against the door behind her. He didn't know why. To display some kind of forcefulness, to express how frustrated he was that she was right, how irritated he was that she wouldn't care. He considered siphoning her to get the kind of rise he sought, but he didn't, in fear that even siphoning couldn't bring her out of this state.

"Congratulations," she droned, "You're officially a reformed sociopath."

He smiled just a touch, though not an inch of it was genuine. Moving his face in close to hers, he clenched his teeth together and said, "So how do you like me now?"

"Stop it!" she yelled, shoving him away with one tough pound to his chest before she rounded on him with a hard smack across the face. And it was good to see that she still lived.

"You need to stop acting that way with me if you ever want to see me again," she threatened.

He recovered from the smack and laughed, "That's the beauty of this place. We can fuck each other up in the worst of ways, and we're still all we've got. You could stab me in the back a thousand more times and I'd have to get over it because I can't do forever without you, Bonnie. I can't even do a few weeks. Please don't make me," he demanded hoarsely. He meant it too much not to let his voice break.

Shattered by his beseeching, she upturned a table of her own. Violence upon an inanimate object apparently wasn't enough, and she returned to him. She alternated between shoving him and destroying café décor, and it wasn't long before the both of them were locked in a rigorous shoving game, vigilant to break any moveable thing in their paths. Kai imagined the ghosts of would-be patrons standing by, watching and not knowing what to do because the violence between them was chaos at its purest. It lacked objective and it lacked organization. Bonnie slid her own flesh across the jagged frame of glass in sweeping everything from the display case out into a heap, and Kai went from elbowing the espresso machine off the counter to whipping Bonnie out of lock so he could grab fistfuls of cash out of the cash register and heave hordes of bills and coins at Bonnie. It seemed a gleeful kind of anarchy but it was panic, it was agony for the both of them to have this much freedom and so little hope. Bonnie caught herself and stopped still to watch Kai scowling at her through a rain of feathering bills, and she remained when he grabbed more fistfuls of money and thrust them once more at her. When the last bills touched the ground, she let out a maniacal snigger, and kept on until her smile drooped and she was about to cry, at which point Kai advanced on her, picked her up in his rage-shaking hands and plopped her on the counter.

She let herself be pushed back so that her head hung off the other side of the counter where a cashier might have stood. Kai bent over her, his face above hers, and bared his teeth against her lips, savoring the willingness with which she let him. But he would not allow his fangs to descend this time. This wasn't about hunger of that kind. It wasn't even about hunger of a sexual kind. It was hunger of the soul that stirred in him, that gave him the inclination to fuck her again, to feel close to somebody after a lifetime of feeling so far. The night before, when she let him bury himself inside her with unprecedented significance, a new emotion arose within him that he still wasn't able to identify. He wanted to feel it at its summit again, and with haste, before she took those few weeks off his life.

He fumbled around at the front of his jeans for a moment, and then beneath the front of her dress and the band of her leggings, deciding at one point just to do away with her pants situation altogether and sliding them down her legs, panties in tow. When she was bare, he helped her sit up so he could pull her dress above her head, wanting to see all of her, or as much as she'd allow. Dead in the eyes, she returned the favor and pulled off his long-sleeved shirt, her delicate hands trailing cold up the sides of his ribs.

Except for the strappy bra he quite enjoyed seeing against her skin, they were both naked and draped over the ordering counter in a public café when they had sex for the second time. He pushed himself between her lips that were already wet with anticipation yet again, and he moved in her, amazed by the feel of her insides devouring him so greedily, and by the pleasure and the sadness both warring in flashes back and forth between her eyes.

He wished she was happier, but her emotions were her business and he knew the ups and downs of prison world adjustment. All he could do for her was remain constant, and influence with little pressure the normalcy he wanted her to feel. Those things and a little post-orgasm oxytocin were his best bet for a better eternity with Bonnie.

After they howled their ends for the empty world to hear, he freed her from his impaling dick, clothed himself first and left her there. It was mean, and he only knew that after he left because of the annoying emotion things he felt tugging him backward, telling him to go back to her and apologize, and hug her, and help her, and walk her home, and apologize twenty more times. But he didn't. Maybe if he broke her heart a little, she would stop breaking his. Maybe fewer weeks would pass before she felt the calling to see him again.

It was later that afternoon when it was still just a bit white out, when he was pacing his house looking for something to occupy his mind that something inside him gravely dimmed. It was as if all power in the house suddenly went out, or a loud source of music zipped silent. A hum faded too instantly into nothing.

He couldn't feel her.

And a blackness inside him pooled upward like vomit, only when it rose to the surface it manifested in water. The emptiness of the world overtook him, seized him strangely and strongly, and it was easier to sob than it was to breathe.

His heart seared and he thought his chest might cave in, but he had to run, to run to her house. He dropped everything and bolted, out the door and down the street, forgetting the thinning of the snow clouds and the imminence of a bright sunset. He ran.

Though it was pointless. He could already feel by the nothingness in the air, same as it was in 1994, that he was alone. She was dead.


	17. Chapter 17

It started when she woke up. Like a fly buzzing around her ears on a sweltering summer day, Bonnie couldn't ignore the feeling that she would do something horrible when she got home.

She'd fucked Kai, and while that was great, her hormones inevitably dropped her from the orgasmic high, dropped her hard on her ass, and it seemed that she had hit the ceiling. They got too close too fast. Now their relationship or whatever it was happening between them was going to rot before it could ripen.

Refuge in the unexplored was possible.

Geographically, there was still more to see in his prison. It was essentially a copy of the world, most of which she hadn't yet traveled. Tokyo, Nepal, London, Rio, _Paris_ and especially places linked to her family history still called to her. Even without locals to fatten the experience or her friends to share it with, the world still existed. And if she was truly stuck until her dying day, only one thing held her back from trying to make the most of her shitty situation.

Elena.

Bonnie thought of this as she walked home, after fucking Kai for the second time in what was definitely the most extreme circumstance. Even though they were alone and nobody was around to witness the animalistic session they had over the counter at the café, it still felt a little wrong. What's worse, when he finished her off, he left. Kai, of all people, didn't stick around to rub her mistake in her face. He reaffirmed the depravity of it all and abandoned her at her most vulnerable; naked, in a compromised position, leaking the cum he filled her with and grappling for a sense of comfort between being finally apart from the bastard and needing him to return to distract her from the ideation frothing in her mind.

Rather than feeling angry with him, the sadness took full control. But she knew how to move on and she was in the right frame of mind to do it.

She was full of vampire blood.

Was it so awful to do what she knew would awaken Elena, so that she herself could live a little?

An artificial death for an artificial life.

Her excitement at this resolution terrified her, ashamed her. She could only behave sullen and dry, unable to face Kai knowing that even he would be disappointed. What he might do to her in the event of her success… Would it be worth the punishment? More, would it be worth losing magic? And it would be eternity without it.

She'd only been a realized witch for a few years anyway.

As she reached her home, she noted every color for its vibrancy. The teals, dark purples, royal blues. The inside of her house was grey with counterfeit winter. Still the color of it struck her and she felt that she would never even see grey the same way.

Though she wanted not to be interrupted, she wished Kai would intrude. To hear him knock would be to know a part of him was still human, and that he was neither ignorant nor insensitive to the despair consuming her.

Maybe he cared anyway. But he wasn't there. Nobody knocked. Bonnie shut her brain off, selected a butcher knife from the kitchen, sat on the living room couch. She admired the grooves in the wood of the coffee table before plunging the knife in her belly.

* * *

He loved her. That much was certain.

Exactly why she killed herself was not.

That she was damaged was also obvious, and it was his fault. But how was he supposed to know she would take things so far? He guessed he should've known this part of her existed. He should've known since the day he tried to rescue her from 1994 with Jeremy, when they found her crying, drinking herself into sentence, ready to die. Bonnie was the strongest person he had ever known, but she was still human.

He could smell the blood from her front door. Tentatively, he turned the handle and swung it open to peer in. She was there, he knew by the scent, but he couldn't see the details from where he stood on the porch.

 _The invitation barrier_.

"Fuck it," he said.

He took a step inside.

He'd only been in her house once before, when the need to see her couldn't be resisted. It was before they saw each other officially, before she started feeding him. He'd been hiding out in town debating when and how to show himself, what best way to insert himself back into her life. The dark and _probably bad_ idea of standing ominously at the foot of her bed until she woke up occurred to him. He went forth with that plan until, clumsily, he knocked over a pile of books and realized Bonnie might not like it if he was there, and he fled. Normal people were complicated.

His heart stopped when he entered the living room. There she was, slumped on her couch with a knife sticking out her belly.

"Hardcore," he muttered to himself, only a little impressed. The wetness in his eyes began to dry up as he wiped it with his sleeves and sniffed back. As much as he wanted hug her to him and weep days away, familiar coldness began to spread its comfort within him.

This image wasn't the one he expected to see the first time he sat in her house with her. Times when he fantasized about being welcome in her house, he always envisioned it would begin awkward and horrible, but not quite _so_ horrible as Bonnie being dead. Approaching her body with apprehension, he stepped lightly until he could crouch down before her and stare, too closely, into her half-lidded eyes gazing unfocused into nothing. She wasn't in there.

Kai sighed. "I'm sorry it came to this, Bonnie," he said. And seeing with little salivation the wide stain of blood soaking onto the couch from her clothes, feeling not only irritated but hurt again by her clear disregard for how much he needed that blood of hers, he felt it. The emotion he couldn't before identify. He didn't love her. That was far beneath them.

He was _in_ love with her. That was what they called this feeling.

He hated thinking of it in those terms and he doubted he would ever say it to her in that way. Not that she needed to hear it in any way he could express it; she would laugh, or puke, or hit him, or all three. Even if he said it to her and he waited long enough to the point where she wouldn't hate it, what then? Marriage? Overrated, and pointless in this Hellscape. He already knew her opinion on moving in together. He had to ask himself what more he wanted from her, and why allowing himself to feel officially in love meant anything. He was used to everything meaning nothing; it was easiest.

He reached for the handle of the knife jutting from her body. He felt energy in the wood.

With his other hand, he tilted her face upward. He eyed momentarily her still features, taking the time to feel the nothingness when he touched her, before he kissed her still lips. He deepened it with an affectionate nip to her top lip, knowing she couldn't feel the pain or the love. He released her mouth from his just before the desire to use tongue turned the kiss creepier than he intended, and he backed to eye her again.

He drummed his fingers along the knife's handle in thought.

"Well," he sighed. "Good of a time as any." With his fingers tightening, he yanked. His mouth hung open in pleasure of the blade crossing her flesh on its way out but he couldn't decide whether he still liked this sensation or not, the trembling of a weapon in someone's body. Bonnie's especially.

Fully unsheathed from her gut, he set the knife in the center of the coffee table. He felt a vibrational teetering in the room and looked around. There wasn't much time left.

"I'll be back," he whispered to the lifeless lump of formerly Bonnie, and then he left to retrieve the ascendant.


	18. Chapter 18

The last thing she remembered was a pinhole of light. Or was it the first thing she saw?

Little time existed in death. One second she was feeling her energy drain out in waves of blood and the next she felt entirely renewed. The evolution was so quick she couldn't discern whether the sense of renewal was a hallucination of death or the beginning of her transition.

She had died before. This death felt different.

She opened her mouth first, not her eyes, expecting the infamous ache in her gums, feeling out for a pounding in her temples, dryness in her throat, hunger. Her tongue slid over the tops of her teeth, searching for unusual points, recoiling midway at the thought of herself baring a set of fangs like Kai's. While frightening, part of it seemed okay; a way to appear as threatening as she wanted to wouldn't be so bad at all.

But nothing. Nothing stood out. She let her eyelids flutter open and thought her vision would be jagged, would be unsteady like watching her life through a handheld camera. Or would it be easier already to see through the dark? For her house was pitch with night.

All was still except a minor sensation that another witch was present. _Another_. She sensed him like always.

Bonnie sat up, marveling at the lack of lethargy in her muscles. She felt incredibly hydrated and undoubtedly alive, but in a fresher way than ever before. It was like waking up from the perfect amount of sleep with the sense that she'd had good dreams.

The shadowed shape of a man in the chair across from her caught her eye and she jumped. She held her chest in surprise and noted the spirited beat within and secondly the dampness of the bloodstain on her clothes. She really wasn't gone for long.

"Welcome back," Kai said.

Bonnie moved her hand to her forehead, as if she could physically still the slew of thoughts rising to her consciousness. Among sensations coming to light, Kai's magic reaching for her. This she could feel. Inwardly, she cursed.

"For a minute I considered feeling offended that you didn't at least leave me a note. Then I realized you didn't plan on dying for good, did you?"

"It didn't work," she murmured, half asking and half knowing.

"Nope," Kai shook his head, an awful smirk coming to play at his lips.

"Did you heal me?" she asked, ready to hit him with a spell for daring to save her life. Although, how sweet would that be of him to save her from herself?

 _Don't think like that._

"Oh, no, you died. No worries."

"Then how...?" she began, and something struck her. "Wait… What are you doing in here?"

Kai was in her house. She never invited him into her house, but he was in her house. Kai Parker, ruiner of her life, sitting in her Grams' chair, starting to smile at her like he knew her thoughts and she wanted to smack him.

"I didn't say you could come in," she said, starting to spit her tone. And when he just kept smiling at her, she pressed. "Kai? What happened to the invitation barrier?"

"Yeah, that… Definitely siphoned that up my first night back in town."

Bonnie couldn't close her mouth. Her jaw hung open and her lips pulled down into a panicking frown and she thought she might hyperventilate. She felt like an idiot. The invitation barrier, the very thing which she believed kept her safe from him for the last weeks, the thing which she held to be symbolic of her choice to be with or without him, was an illusion.

"And you just acted all this time like it was there? You let me think I was safe when you— _What is that_?"

A kind of trinket set on the coffee table reflected a moonbeam in her eye when she moved her head. For a millisecond it didn't strike her as the kind of thing to let herself be distracted by mid-sentence, until a double-take confirmed a familiar little _something_ to the object. It was antique-like, a glass sphere with some kind of delicate, planetary set-up inside of it. It looked like something that would react in a mathematical way given the right elements: a chant, a celestial event, Bennett blood.

"Is that what I think it is?" she asked in awe, suddenly forgetful of trespassed barriers both figurative and literal.

Kai nodded.

"Where'd you find it?" she asked eagerly, reaching out to pick it up and examine. Kai swiped it up before she could and held it teasingly.

"In my closet," he answered nonchalantly, rolling the ball back and forth between his hands for her to see.

"Kai. For real. Where was it?"

"Bonnie. For real. I've had it this whole time."

She glared death at him, but he continued on some kind of introductory speech.

"You know," he said, "You're the only person I've ever known to be so selfless it's actually self _ish_. What was your plan? You were gonna transition and then what? We'd both feed off blood bags for the rest of eternity? Does that sound at all appetizing to you? Did you consider for a second that I don't feel half the nourishment or contentment from a blood bag than I do from you? Did you consider that maybe in a place like this your transition wouldn't work and you would just die, and I'd be stuck alone again? Or that your attempt to break the spell on Elena would just kill you both?"

"Is she…?"

"I don't know, Bonnie," he snapped. "We're here. She's there. I don't know if you killed her. But she sure as hell isn't awake, so suck on that."

"But if I'm alive—"

"You're alive because that's how it works here."

"What do you mean?"

"There was a little more to my grand plan where I link your life to Elena's. I did a lot of thinking in 1903. I hoped it was temporary, what you did to me. I hoped it was a good trick to teach me a lesson, because I learned. Trust me. And when you didn't come back for me… Well, I had time. I had materials to work with. I had anger. Pain. Like-minded inmates. Seems at this point, given how close we've become that I should regret it, but I don't. Not even for a second."

She shifted uncomfortably, running her fingers through her hair and leaving them there, closing her eyes in effort to blacken and to silence for better understanding.

"I don't… _what_?" she almost whispered, lifting her eyelids to watch her world turn upside down yet again.

"And the planning. _Holy hell_. Literally. Having to magically insert the memory of me being upset when we got here…. Having to act all this time like it was an unfortunate accident… Lying can be so exhausting. But now that you've gone and done this to yourself, you're gonna figure out something's up. So I might as well come out with it, right? You might ask, ' _But how did you do it all by yourself_?'" he mocked a girlish tone. "To that I say… _I'm just that fucking good_. Also I channeled a little bit from my big dead coven. And you might ask, ' _But why_?' Same reason any of these places are made. _To punish_. And you're probably gonna ask me like a thousand times if I can just please pretty please get you out of here. And a thousand times back, for the rest of forever, which you in fact _can_ experience, I'm going to say _no way in Hell, babe_."

"Kai…" she warned between grinding molars.

"My coven didn't make this place for me, Bonnie. I made it for you."

He waited patiently with gleefully glaring eyes, not afraid to keep them trained directly on hers. He seemed so confident in his crime.

"I'll kill you," was the first thing she said, and she said it without theatrics. She meant it.

"I wouldn't. I'm the leader of the Gemini coven, _may they_ _R.I.P_., so prison worlds are linked to me, remember? Kill me and this place will detonate, with you in it. But please, put that to the test. Everyone's crossed off my To-Kill list, I got to bang you and I finally ate Fool's Gold the other day, so now I can welcome oblivion."

"Fuck you!"

"Hey, at least I gave you an escape clause."

"You just get to punish me for punishing you for the complete fucking nightmare you put me through?!"

"Uh, you stabbed me first. Like _when_ is that fact going to penetrate the fortress of your saintliness? Being Bonnie Bennett doesn't exempt you from blame."

Bonnie stood and prepared herself to say it for the first and last time, because she refused to fall in line with his assumption. This one time had to be good. It had to be visceral. Not too pleading, but not too meaningless. It had to convey strictly in tone and facial expression how much she needed him to say yes.

She hung her head and let her eyes fall sadly into him, the fuller and rounder for them to appear. She let her lips quiver. "Kai…take me home," she pleaded with a little too much grit in her teeth and it sounded all wrong. There was no way she would get the answer she wanted.

As expected, Kai just shrugged and gave an offhand, "No." And her heart pounded and it was harder to breathe, and she wanted to both scream and gasp for air. "Not even if I could," Kai concluded.

"What does THAT mean?" she shrieked.

"Whoa," he said in reaction to the outburst. "I might've tweaked the prison world spell a little bit. Even with the ascendant, a full moon and a bloody Bonnie, we're stuck as fuck. Hah, get it? 'Cause we're stuck and we fucked. And it rhymes."

The tears of lost dignity announced themselves. Bonnie felt that she couldn't catch up with her reality, with herself. Everything Kai told her needed more time to be processed yet time did not wait. Kai stood to join her and she felt as though she was watching him through a future lens and certain ways that she wanted to react could not be honored. She wanted to kill him and she couldn't break from her mental plane to the physical; she wanted to call him the worst names imaginable and she didn't think she would be heard.

"I never lied to you when I said we _can't_ get back," he said softly as he approached her. He reached out and thumbed a tear from its roll down her cheek. Too enveloped in digestion, she couldn't move to shoo him off. Fortunately he knew better than to evolve the comforting gesture into an embrace. After the one tear, he kept his hands off.

"I know you hate me right now. But I think you're gonna learn to like it here."

"Oh my god," she mused, because it was clearer now why he never seemed bothered by imprisonment, regardless of who put them there. Being stuck here, forever, with her, in a fucked up domestic fairytale, was just what he wanted. "You're not just punishing me. You're retiring, and I'm the fucking retirement cake. You like this. Otherwise you wouldn't be here."

Kai displaced his jaw, bit his lip and tilted his head in a teasing way that made her livid. With the foulest satisfaction, he said, "Sue me."

"Get out," she commanded gutturally.

"Don't you think we should settle this? I really feel like if I just leave now, things will be awkward next time we see each other."

"Get. Out."

"Seriously, Bonnie. I'm open to punishment. You can stab me with most things. Or batter me with something, whatever sounds more fun for you is fun for me. Or I could make it up to you some other way. How many bouquets do you want? Fancy dinners? We could eat out. Or I could just eat _you_ out. _Even though I can't get over how cannibalistic that sounds_."

"Get out, _get out get OUT GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT_!" she screamed in loudening succession, all the while feeling a vengeful black magic congregating in her veins, rushing toward her hands which cocked in Kai's direction. In little time he began droning in what appeared to be a correct amount of the pain she wanted him to feel; his face was turning pink, the vessels in his forehead rising while he squeezed his palms against his temples, fingernails digging into the skin as if he needed to claw his own face off to end the suffering. She willed herself to ignore, rather expertly, the crooning between her legs, not knowing whether it was the thought of his face down there or how much pain he was in that turned her on in that moment. She could feel her own heart hammering toward the brink of arrest; it was either too thrilling to break him down or too much for her to watch. _Breathe_. Kai's body curled and while he remained staggering on his feet, he looked about to drop any moment. _Just die already_.

Tired of his squirming, she twisted her fingers like taking the cap off an invisible bottle and a harrowing crack filled the room.

* * *

He awoke outside, alone, close to daybreak.

Apparently willing to risk the collapse of their world in a deadly game of Kai vs. The Sun, she had dragged his dead, broke-neck body out of her home and left him on the porch where he belonged: unwelcome.

Despite the brisk baby-blue wind cutting his face, there remained a tiny flame in his chest and he knew that she was still inside. He would've expected her to run. To disappear into a far-off corner of the world and play _catch me if you can_ for the next year or two until the inevitable desire for company drew them back together. No. She stayed. But he couldn't be sure whether it was because she knew she'd have to forgive him eventually or because she was attached by sickness and sadness to the ghost town replica of her home.

Whatever the reason, she knew the truth. Truth club, party of two. And it felt good, but he'd been brutal about it. While waiting for her to come back to life, he ran through versions of speeches in his mind, rehearsing, planning to tell it gently. But it was a hard truth to tell and no manner of kindness would soften the blow. And predictably, he found that he could not make his mouth say words without being a snippy snarky snake. It was pathological.

She needed time.

Why not reject the version of events where he pines for pardon two blocks away over a stubborn number of months, and instead just go on a blood-bag-bingey vacation?


	19. Chapter 19

_Here you are again_.

Bonnie sat unladylike in a bar stool at the lowly lit Mystic Grill, suckling from a full, dark glass of wine.

 _Weeks_. _Weeks alone_.

She refused to stoop to a locator spell. Let the evil bastard come back from wherever he was whenever he dared.

Yet sometimes her ribs ached as if they were cracking apart.

The loneliness whispered in her ears each day, telling her it was her fault that he left her. And maybe he lied when he said there was no way out. Maybe that part was a test. Maybe she didn't pass, and he went back to reality. Maybe he _really_ left her.

Of course, he couldn't have done that. She stole the ascendant from him after she killed him.

It was a little test of her own. If he went back into her house to retrieve it after waking up, it meant the ascendant was still valuable. If he didn't, it meant he was confident in the impossibility that Bonnie might ascend home without him.

He wasn't lying. When she slit her palm and dribbled blood over the ascendant, said the spell while watching the red droplets roll over the spherical glass and glanced from that to the full moon above…nothing happened. And the next time she opened her front door, he was gone. She couldn't feel him either. He was _far_ gone, somewhere unknown. He left no note, never texted, never called. So it was true. So they were stuck as fuck.

Yet some part of her knew better than to trust him, even when he declared his worst. Some part of her still hoped that he left a loophole. Meanwhile, the ascendant slept in a basket of dirty laundry. And Bonnie drank herself at the town bar.

She grimaced just thinking of it. She hated that ascendant. When she held it in her hand it invoked the worst of feelings from her; it vibrated of faithfulness to its wielder. That was mainly why she hid it out of sight, cushioned on all sides by clothing. It was less to give a potentially snooping Kai some trouble than it was to get it out of her mind. Still, the thought of it screeched in her brain.

She supposed it felt a little better, knowing the truth. What before was an uncomfortable anxiety was now a resolute misery. She'd felt that Kai was keeping something from her; well this was it. And it did explain some things, particularly her lack of menses. There was no moon cycle to push and pull her body. In another sense, despite this world being like a diorama of the real one, she couldn't deny that she always felt connected to it. When she was dropped into 1994 with Damon, there was an obvious disconnect and neither of them knew where they were, why they were there, or how to feel okay. Here, she felt an unmistakable sense of belonging, no matter how hard she tried to fight it with how much she wanted to leave. But it was a perfect prison, wasn't it? Everything was there; her up-to-date belongings, favorite movies, music, and more. Damon was going to kill her back home. In a way, her prison was protection. In a way, even though half of it served his evil plan, Kai made sure she got to live.

 _Remind me to thank him_ , she scoffed at herself and swallowed wide mouthfuls of wine until her glass was empty. Blurry, she twirled the glass in her hand as if to notify a ghost bartender that she was dry, and she frowned when she realized she would have to accept for a long time that no one would refill her. Only _him_ , if he was there.

 _Weeks_.

She wanted him to come back so she could brutalize him again. Punch his teeth in and watch them regrow. Or rip his heart out and make it permanent. No, she couldn't do that. Because then, well…disaster. Then it would just end.

She found it poetic. To kill herself, she would have to kill him.

She threw her glass into the liquor shelves just to hear it shatter, just to watch the shards sprinkle upon the floor, followed by one whiskey bottle cascading. She had to hand it to Kai: destruction was empowering.

She didn't know how she was only just beginning to like it so much. She'd been a captive to prison worlds more time than not in the last two years. All of her time spent alone had amounted to a certain mentality. It would've come sooner if not for having a roommate those first few months of prison world life in 1994; she couldn't get time alone then. Even when she was the aggressor in their fights, Damon came moseying around for bittersweet bad company. She was shocked to find that he was less tolerable of solitude than she. But she accepted it because her tolerance was only slightly higher. And she acquiesced to his companionship.

Would that happen with Kai? The two of them had bad history, less in amount than Damon but worse in trauma, to get past. But in time, as with Damon, wasn't it inevitable that she would mold to his company? Even by the time Bonnie made it out of 1994, when she reconnected with Damon and he was so proud of her and so relieved and so glad that she made it, their bond held true and strong. The things they went through after only so much time were thicker than any of the terror that happened before that. That was why it hurt her so much when, as if a switch flipped, he could just betray her.

At least in this world she was somebody's number one.

It was obvious, wasn't it? He _liked_ her. She couldn't tell whether he even figured that out yet. But why else would he land himself there, with her, in domestic dream land?

He was improving, admittedly. Most sociopaths just kill the ones they love when the ones they love hurt them.

 _Love_.

She doubted he was capable.

A bad idea had been burning inside her. Burning for days.

If there was some way back home, something he wasn't telling her, maybe she could play along. Play nice, elicit from him the kinds of pleasures he never imagined, the kinds of feelings he wouldn't understand, and use them against him. Maybe she could fuck the truth out of him. Maybe she could _love_ it out of him. She could win her ticket home, turn around and leave him with a mouthful of her dust. _Suck on that for eternity_.

She liked this plan. The more she thought it out the more she missed Kai, only because she was eager to make his new heart her plaything.

A clock on the wall struck midnight. 11:59 on her phone flicked to 12:00. Like magic, the wine in the bottle on the bar beside her raised up two glasses worth. _Everything in its right place_. Everything but the glass on the floor. That was hers to undo.

12:01. A new day in damnation.

Maybe it would be the day Kai came back.

Bonnie smirked. It was dark out. By real world standards, all stores would be closed. But right then, nothing sounded better than shopping. Decidedly she stepped down from her stool. On second thought, she poured a little half glass from the now full wine bottle, downed the entire pour in just a few gulps, and on third thought, she refilled the glass again and carried it outside with her. After all, it was her world. Wine in hand and evil plan in her front pocket, Bonnie proceeded to stumble her way to the shopping strip.

It took a good half hour, but she eventually did find herself at her destination: the town's best lingerie shop. She let herself in. All in a blur, she navigated through the back room until she figured out the lighting system, as well as the music so that she had something to listen to. When all was set to her liking, she fulfilled a dream she never thought she would: stuffing a large bag full of the prettiest, most expensive underthings, some for herself to enjoy, some for someone else to enjoy on her. Seeking out the sexiest underwear for the purpose of impressing Kai was a sobering thought, so she drank to it, and she was sure not to lose track of her wine glass as she continued filling up her bag. By the time she felt finished, she was sufficiently drunk enough not to care about the weight she was about to pull on her walk back home. In her dizzy mind, it was worth it.

* * *

Kai frowned at the sun just settling into the ends of the earth.

He'd slept in the airport and now waited for darkness to fall. He needed absolute certainty that he wouldn't burn to death if he was going to pilot a plane with any sort of concentration. Plane crashes in 1994 weren't such a big deal; that was his prison; he wouldn't die. This time, being a vampire of course he'd survive the crash but, the threat of daylight coming while he was still swimming to shore was enough to keep his head screwed on straight.

He wanted to kick himself every day for designing this world just for her and not the two of them. At the time, he liked the art of it. And he hated respecting Bonnie's daylight; he hated not having a daylight ring. But for how much he hated the inconvenience, the risk enticed him. The fact that one wrong move in the cockpit might mean the ruin of him, Bonnie's prison and any chance of having sex with her again…well, it was dead exhilarating. He really liked himself and his masterpiece of a prison world, and he liked sex with Bonnie a lot… anyone who liked anything as much as he liked those three would be crazy to risk losing them all. But that was why they were running fool's errands of lives, and why he was about to eat a croissant and go fly a fucking airplane.

He sighed and grinned stupidly at the sun's last light fading from the sky.

"Night night," he cooed, and rose from the chair in his gate. It was time. Time to walk down the gangway. Time to flip switches. Time to fly. And as he walked, he thought of what he was heading for and a sweet warmth spread in his chest, a feeling so saccharine he smiled wider and he had to close his eyes to contain his soul.

 _The life ahead of him_.

As he steered the speeding plane to flight, he watched the lights and countryside grow smaller. He said, "Au revoir." Paris had been great, but twenty six days away from Bonnie was plenty.


	20. Chapter 20

Bonnie woke late the next afternoon, sprawled hard in a strewn mess of new panties on her bedroom floor. She only vaguely remembered obsessing over which to wear for him first. Passing out in the middle of that process wasn't a memory that existed in her brain.

A headache pounded its alarm from ear to ear and she groaned. Looking at the sunlight pouring in the window, she could see by the positions of shadows it cast in her room she had little time before night returned. It had been this way lately; she slept the daylight away, her body favoring the cool mystique of darkness, Kai's supposed half of the world above her own bright and tiring half. Drinking, too, put her down in a way she liked, but it came in exchange for the willingness to get out of bed at all if the sun was up. Sometimes she didn't, day or night.

She stretched her arms out across all the panties and yawned. _What a mess_. And she didn't know which was messier: her house or herself.

For a good while she lay there awake debating whether to get up or not. Her body felt slack and tired, even after sleeping for so long. And what was she supposed to do when she got up? It all seemed so useless; waking up each day, finding something to eat, finding something to do before it was time to eat again, finding something else to do before it was time to sleep again. She stopped dreaming at night and sleep, for how she loved its escape, was beginning to feel as useless.

And what about all these underthings? Even drunk Bonnie should've known that was a useless shopping trip. There hadn't been a sign of Kai in so long; she had no idea when she would see him again. What was the point in planning anything, malicious or otherwise?

Everything made her more lethargic than emotional lately.

Even the thought of Elena, dead. _Probably dead_. She still didn't know. She wished she could have a mirror like the Beast gave to Belle, so she could see from her world through a window to the real one and just glimpse, just to know who was okay and who wasn't. Was Elena dead or alive? Was Damon losing his mind with grief? Was Caroline getting over it? How was Stefan? _Jeremy_? And poor, poor Alaric?

The closest thing Bonnie had to a magic mirror was alcohol, and she needed more of that, pronto. Thus began a repeat of the day before.

She was already drunk by the time she hit the shower and the hot water felt like a dream. Afterward, she dressed in an old t-shirt and an old pair of panties rather than one of the fifty new pairs, and floated to her kitchen for another glass of wine and a much needed joint.

High, she daydreamed of Kai's hands running over her body like they had, each fingertip in seeming worship, not of her skin or her submission to him, but simply her. She had no doubt he was falling hard, _poor thing_.

In his absence, she'd only tried touching herself once. It ended terribly and left her having to admit that she wanted him to come back now, more to fuck her than be played for an escape route. She recalled the feeling of him prying her apart from the surface to the core like he wanted to rip her; the way her cunt braced around him, hungering; the shame in her heart, ringing in her ears, heat skipping over the skin on her face each time she heard her own swooning breath. And the way he moved to fill her, inch up into the deepest end of her, ram his head against her cervix as if like a battering ram he could break it down and fuck his conquer through her entire body; as if it wouldn't hurt, or as if by hurting her he made his point.

She longed for that pain to happen again.

"Stop," she scolded out loud. And one defiant memory wriggled up: holding herself steady with a hand on his chest and feeling his heart beat underneath her palm as he rocked against her. It pounded wildly. And she remembered his face looked so concerned. Focused. Every good move he made was so precise for someone who put so much effort into making her life hell.

 _Stop_. She turned the tip of her joint and pressed it into the skin on her wrist. Both she and her skin hissed at the ember sizzling to death as it scarred her. She hated that she wanted to hurt herself to stop her own thoughts. She hated it so much she wanted to break something, and so she thrust the joint at the floor in frustration, but it was such a light little thing it made no sound and was not appeasing. Desperate, she took a plate out of the cupboard and dropped it. As it clattered to pieces, she still felt no satisfaction. And another persistent thought: the glitch in his smirk when he fucked her. It made her think she shouldn't belittle the act by thinking of it as a _fuck_. He was clearly not just putting his dick any which where he could. The way he _fucked_ was too devotional; it made her feel too spotlit and appreciated, and that confused her.

Bonnie's chest began to throb.

There was only one sure way to make the thoughts and the anxiety tremoring within her stop. Death here was only a nap. A nap was what she needed to clear her mind.

She took no time to debate. A little pistol she swiped from the neighbor's private cabinets now hid in her liquor and weed cabinet. She found it, and exacted a small bullet through her own brain.

By midnight, she was revived and pulling her knees into her chest while she cried on her bed. Her sixth glass of merlot sat half empty on the night stand. As usual, evidence that she attempted to return to normalcy lay unbothered nearby: a favorite book with the bookmark still stuck in the first chapter. She couldn't read anymore. She couldn't breathe. She could hardly do magic because of the pain that crept into her soul, transformed there and crawled out in apathetic wickedness. Bonnie Bennett, the wicked witch. Only occasionally did she allow her pain to consume her in its true form, because on these occasions it left her in a crippling fit of tears. But these moments were her hints that she still lived within herself. They were tormenting but she cherished them for their reminder.

She cried so hard she didn't notice the hum when it first began.

Minutes passed before the worming accost of his magic caught her attention and she looked up. A man was climbing in through her bedroom window. Briefly she entertained the idea that it might be someone unexpected, like Jeremy coming to her rescue after all this time, but that thought was promptly stamped out. It was obvious by the style of jeans, the troublemaker boots, the ironic blazer squaring his shoulders and the sly way this man's body moved, it was—

"Kai!" she gasped, trying to sound more angry than surprised.

She hurriedly wiped the tears from her face so that when he looked at her he might not notice that she was a complete disaster. He turned and she read the swishy words on his white shirt: _Voulez-vous?_ It was both an uncharacteristic choice and so totally characteristic to wear such a dumb shirt and she wondered if it was a humorous nod to sexuality or ABBA. Regardless, it lightened the weighted cloud hanging over her just a little. There was something about him, she realized; she could always count on it to interest her. When he looked upon her, however, it was plain on his face that after all this time without her he was starving. She remembered how he starved himself of blood bags in favor of the fresher blood that ran through her veins. He panted in thirst. She could see him in his eyes as he pinned her with them, the blackness not fully coating yet. An aura of red lay in a deadly ring around his irises and his lips were pulled back, the fangs ready. Just the sight of him was enough to shock a tremble through her spine. She should be afraid. She should be very afraid.

But she wasn't.

On the contrary, she sat prettily in the radiation of his magic. She frowned to keep him thinking otherwise, but it felt good. His vibrancy ate her alive and he flowed through her, and she imagined he could feel the very same thing. Her body began to stiffen, however, as her mind digested his presence. He was actually there. She was actually not alone. It was nerve-wracking in its relief. Opposite her stiffening, she watched him calm as his eyes grew less fixed with each silently passing second that they stared at each other.

"You went shopping," he finally said, eyeing hungrily the mess of panties on the floor.

"What are you doing here?" she spat.

"You look like hell," he commented, ignoring her question. He was probably right. She killed herself when her hair was wet. It can't have dried in an attractive way. And she admitted inwardly that other hygienic qualities probably suffered without her attention. But she wanted to slit his throat for attacking her appearance after all he had done to her.

"You're not very good at apologizing," she said, resorting to diplomacy.

He shrugged. "I'm not very sorry."

Bonnie experienced a sudden mournful thought of her evaporated invitation barrier. Something had to be said in honor of its memory. Even though she knew he wouldn't care, she had to tell him.

"You can't just climb in people's windows at night. It's creepy. You can't just come here anymore. You can't just—"

"You're not going to ask where I've been?" he cut her off, taking a step closer to her bed, which did nothing to soothe her tensing muscles. The rigidity in her form made her feel like a snake at attention, ready to snap. And she would if he came any closer.

"I don't care," she informed him. She noted the threatening situation of his unannounced presence in her bedroom at night, advancing toward her bed where she sat half naked, quite a match in fight but quite less so in level of intoxication. She was essentially drunk, and he seemed confident in his air and gait. Even with her skill in magical defenses, he would overpower her in anything he might have planned. Then again, did it matter? If he killed her, she would rise. If he kissed her, she would pretend to like it, because that was _her_ plan.

Smirking, he slipped his hand underneath his blazer and from some secret pocket pulled out a small box. Bonnie apprehensively watched him flip open the top and finger out what appeared to be a cigarette. He popped the cigarette between his lips and lit it with a snap of his fingers. Their eyes locked as he took his first drag, she realized the cigarette in his mouth was a pastel green color, and he tossed the box onto the bed before her criss-crossed legs. She made sure to tighten her eyes into a glare at him before acknowledging the box, not knowing why he was smoking in her room and throwing things at her.

Then, with jaw-dropping force, she remembered.


	21. Chapter 21

"I hate you," she said with resigned disgust.

He was crouched down beside her bed, sorting through the mess of panties, cigarette clamped between his lips. Dazed by wine and impending blood loss, Bonnie fingered the long elegant cigarettes from butt to end, yellow, rose, mint, lavender, and cornflower blue. They were nice. And she had asked for them, hadn't she? She ran the pad of her fingertips across the gold lettering on the box.

Instead of a witty retort, he tossed the strappy piece of lingerie he'd been admiring back into the pile and stood up. Pinching the cigarette between two fingers, he removed it from his mouth in a small cloud of smoke.

"Surely you don't mean that," he grinned. "Not after all we've been through."

"I mean it. _Especially_ after all we've been through."

He sighed, never loosening his smile. "Well, haters gonna hate. That's what the hated say now, isn't it?"

Bonnie cocked her head, "You think just because you honor an offhand joke I made you get to do that thing?"

"You did say."

"No, what I said was get me French cigarettes, and I'll _think_ about it."

"Ok _aaay_. So start thinking."

She dared to glance into his eyes. They were wide and dark, but under relative control. His calm posture further confirmed the confidence with which he expected her to serve him. By accident, she allowed his eyes to suck her up and it occurred to her that he was right. To Hell with plans and defenses. He could turn around to leave that instant and she wouldn't let him. Her own hunger required satiation.

He took another step toward her where she sat in all her tension and tragedy on the bed.

"Well?" he prodded.

What was he doing to her? Her vertebrae seemed to separate as if her body was falling, or standing in an elevator at fast descent. She couldn't unstick her eyes from his and she noticed his beginning to darken the deeper they stared. Weren't witches supposed to be immune to those vampire tactics? Yet she felt lured. She began to shake. In need of breath, her mouth fell open just slightly and, caught briefly on the corner of vertigo, her head shifted backward. Maybe it was her blood fleeing downward, vacating the height of her head to leave it hollow and light, lolling on its hinges to her stretching neck. Without her mind's permission, she was exposing for him the thrumming landscape of skin that protected the spring of her life force. Even though she knew it wasn't exactly what he wanted. It was something awful in her, an anti-instinct, that made her want to please him; to be agreeable; self-sacrificial; to lay herself across the slaying stone so that he might be satisfied.

"Let me think for you, then."

It wasn't her. She felt like a different person as she watched him take a short drag from the cigarette and hold it in, as she let him guide her face by the jaw so that he could delicately skim his opening mouth over hers and let his lungful of smoke ghost to the back of her throat. And it didn't feel a right thing that Bonnie, the Bonnie she knew herself to be, would inhale at the same moment, the easier to accept his trash a welcome guest in her own lungs. She watched him watching her breathe his smoke in, a proud little darkness devouring her in his eyes. She thought he would try to kiss her then but instead he gifted the cigarette to her lips, wrapped his hands around her knees and yanked her to the edge of the bed.

She gasped as her ass slid forcefully his direction and the cigarette in her lips fell, burning little spots in the sheets, and in her skin, making her angrier.

"Fuck, Kai!"

He lowered his eyelids and tightened his jaw. It was an accident and the guilt was evident in his eyes, but repressed in his crooked lips and brows.

Bonnie picked up the cigarette and reignited it with a growled spell. They glared each other down as she took an elegant drag, and he kneeled on the floor before her like he said he would all those weeks ago. Biting his lip in the apparent inability to keep to himself, he laid a hand over the top of her thigh. For a moment, she allowed it. A taunting idea that she was an animal in a zoo and he was the zookeeper made her want to retaliate in small, calculated ways. So she smiled at him, exhaled a slow gust of smoke into his face and watched him, annoyed yet unsurprised, blink through it. Then she dabbed the cigarette out on the back of his hand.

He sucked in a sharp breath, but rather than jerk his hand away he clenched, digging his fingernails into her knee, looking on satisfied as it provoked an equally sharp intake of breath from Bonnie.

"Do you ever clip those?" she snapped.

"With my mouth," he shot back. And the way he said it made her think he was trying to accomplish something.

"Sick."

"I know you are, but what am I?" he teased. She rolled her eyes.

 _Now's the time_ , she supposed. _Time to fake it_.

She raised her eyebrow and glanced down at his hand on her leg.

"Sorry," she said.

"What?" He laughed.

"I said I'm sorry."

"Why?" His smile and laughter disappeared and a suspicious scowl spread over his face.

"I didn't mean to hurt you," Bonnie mumbled, trying to make her eyes big and her lips subtly pout. Maybe Kai was the type of man weakened by these things.

"Yes," he reassured matter-of-factly, "You did."

"Well I regret it. And I'm sorry."

His angry suspicion turned to concern. "Are you okay?"

She realized that a good play would require some transition. She couldn't just switch her attitude toward him in a night. If she was to be successful in winning the key out of her prison, she was in it for the long game.

"No," she answered truthfully. She was not okay. This he would believe.

His features contorted in utter confusion.

"Oh," he said. "Well…okay."

"Just take what you want and go. I'm tired."

He nodded, seeming suddenly just as anxious to leave as she was for him to stay. She knew it was backward. Just the thought of being alone again, alone after feeling what it was like to have Kai back, even in all his flaws and crimes…scared the holy hell out of her. And she wished he would force himself on her; take her body; move into her house; infiltrate; haunt her; because for as atypical as it felt for Bonnie to have a relationship with someone like Kai, his very presence reminded her who she was. Whatever she did or didn't do, thought or didn't think, said or didn't say around him, he served quite unknowingly as her compass. It took only the ten minutes he'd been standing unwelcome in her bedroom for her to understand that in the time he was gone, she had forgotten herself.

With unexpected gentleness and eyes closed, Kai dragged his open mouth along her inner thigh in search of the right spot. Bonnie gnashed her teeth. She hardly missed this anticipation, this waiting for him to bite. The frustration burbled in her chest and she found it unusually difficult to suppress.

Without thinking, she weaved her fingers through his hair and pulled them into a fist. He let his head be pulled by her hand, wincing. "What the hell?" he groaned.

Bonnie didn't have to grapple long for something to excuse this miniature outburst.

"You went to France without me?" she snarled through her teeth.

"I missed you."

"You went to _France_. _Without me_."

"We'll go back," he amended, glaring up at her and she found herself stricken by the black marbles his eyes had so quickly become. The veins of thirst danced frantically underneath and his fangs flashed at full length. She still gaped at him when he buried his face between her thighs. _We_. He was taking her to France. Forget fear of flight by an amateur pilot, she was finally going to see France. Maybe the rest of the world would follow. She felt his familiar pre-feed kiss on her skin and something that wanted to be a smile turned up one side of her face. His lips unveiled introductory pinpricks and she held her breath before the fast slope of teeth.

"I can't believe I'm letting you do this," she hissed more to herself than to him.

In fervor, he ran his hands up her legs and clawed onto her for support. She felt herself being pulled too close to the edge of the bed and the hand that wasn't in his hair clutched onto the blankets. They only moved with her so she switched to pushing back against his shoulder. He was cold. She watched the spidering veins on his face, both hoping it would end soon and hoping he'd keep going until he killed her. _Wow, Bonnie_ , she cautioned herself. Awakening to the dark thought, the darkness in her spread its tattered spirit. Suddenly she couldn't think of anything she wanted more than to feed it. But she didn't know how, and so tried ignoring the idea by concentrating on the pain.

It wasn't as painful, however, as when he fed from her neck. It forced her to wonder why she didn't let him do it sooner. As his hand slowly inched further up her thigh, she guessed that was the reason. The way he liked to transition violence into sex alarmed her. Or it had before, anyway. This time she felt less bothered by it and more accustomed, even more attuned to her own sexuality as if Kai's way of doing things was the natural progression. Who cared if it wasn't?

The darkness she'd been trying to quash began to throb and she couldn't contain the need to hurt. She gripped the back of his head with both hands and pushed to deepen his bite, to worsen the wound, involve more nerves firing up into her brain, telling her to body to move, to panic, fight or flight, responses she wouldn't listen to. He responded well to her encouragement. He widened his jaws and entombed his fangs, bringing so much of her into his mouth she could feel his molars grating her open flesh while his tongue shoveled blood, and she moaned, and her darkness moaned, and it occurred to her that the agony, now and possibly always, made her want him more.

At the sound of her moan, he unlatched. The absence of pain angered her but he was looking up into her eyes, blood smeared across his face, his irises returned and he seemed…worried. She glanced to the wound on her thigh and it was chillingly deep, ragged and glistening red while little pulses of blood gushed out in waste down her leg, onto the bed and the floor. He got to his feet, bit open his wrist and pressed it to Bonnie's lips. It was a rather forceful healing, and she felt his fingers at the base of her skull, holding her in place and in feed until contentment was felt by him and not her. She ingested more blood than she would have liked and when he finally released her, he was again looking at her with such concern that it made her feel like she was the crazy one.

After the skin on her thigh fibered back together, Kai wiped the blood from his face onto the shoulder of his white shirt and she mirrored him.

"Oh my god," she muttered, looking down at the redness wet and dry.

He dropped back to his knees and after a soft glance at her for reassurance he licked at the leftovers of blood on her newly healed skin. Bonnie let her hands fall to her sides and noticed she was shaking. She shivered, too. She didn't know why her body might be so stunned except for the trauma done to her leg, but she was used to that sort of thing.

Kai started to kiss her thigh where he licked it clean. Her breath left her in that way it tended to every time he started on her this way. He wrapped his arms around her hips affectionately and nuzzled her cunt. Everything in her being felt reeled to him by invisible strings. She felt so drawn she had to touch him or she would explode. She let her trembling fingers meet the side of his face, tracing his eyebrow with her thumb. She held his ear and drew soft zigzags in his hair where before she took fistfuls to hurt.

"I missed you too," she said sadly, because it was true. It didn't need to change the fact that she was about to play the hell out of him. He sighed heavily into the fabric of her panties. After a desirous kiss to the spot just above her pubic bone, he broke off of her and stood. Bonnie wondered miserably what she'd done.

She watched as he held his hands loosely out before him, palms turned up toward the ceiling. With one last woeful glance at her, he closed his eyes and started chanting silently to himself.

"What are you doing?" she asked, her heartbeat raging between her legs. She didn't want him over there; she wanted him back where he belonged, teasing her morals out of her.

"Giving it back," was all he answered. She didn't know what he meant by it until a moment later when his eyes popped open and he gasped for air as though an invisible entity choked him. Whatever entity it was grabbed him by the collar and Bonnie watched in horror as he was pulled rapidly out of her room.

"Kai!" she shrieked after him. Forgetting her shakiness, she leapt up from the bed and fled after him. She couldn't hear or see him anymore, and so ventured into the darkness of her house calling him. What did he give back? And why would he give _anything_ back to her? _He couldn't mean…_

Not knowing what else made more sense, Bonnie headed for her front door.

There he was, panting on her porch. He looked at her earnestly when she swung the door open and she didn't know what to make of it. Little bits of blood had flicked out from his eyes and nose and he wiped these up with his sleeve, either embarrassed or trying to appear that way in the event that such a feeling might win more amnesty. It almost did.

"You gave back my invitation barrier," she said, trying not to sound too impressed. "Why?"

He shrugged as he caught his breath. He gave her no real answer and she suspected he was embarrassed also by his kindness.

"Thanks," she said, relieving him of the pressure to speak. "But…" And she couldn't finish saying what she wanted to say. She held it in because of how stupid it made her, and how inevitable it was that she would regret it sooner than later.

"But what?"

But it was part of the play, wasn't it? She figured it was a logical next step.

"But what, Bonnie?"

She took in a breath and twisted her fingers up in the hem of her shirt. If she went forward with it, she could expect to lose that shirt. She could expect to hold fast through another rough stint…or maybe he would have her slowly for the amount of meaning bestowed upon him. Welcome, for the first time in his life. Maybe he wouldn't have her at all. Maybe instead they would sit together and not speak, but simply feel again what it was like to be in a room with another person and need nothing but a second breath to hear. She knew she didn't want him to go away. In fact, she knew for certain that the next time he left her house she wanted to be with him. She wanted to leave Mystic Falls altogether. However long it took to get the key out of him, she could play patiently, as long as there were new sights to distract her from the toxicity soon to flourish between them.

Bonnie realized she was stalling and that Kai was hanging onto her silence because perhaps he suspected what was about to happen, and how it was to change their lives. She took a step back into her house and let the door hang open, and she was already lamenting her decision but the hope in his eyes threatened to break her heart.

"You can come in."

* * *

 **A/N: Part Two is now posted! Head to my stories and you will find Oblivion. Thanks, readers! (I love you)**


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